marketing teardown: 📓notion

In partnership with

hey, marketer! 

one thing that’s consistent is change – so, when a legacy player has been owning a space for a while, it naturally beckons competitors to step in and offer something a little different and steal market share.

evernote stalled out and made way for notion to offer a new approach to notes: based on building blocks and databases, rather than just pages in folders.

okay - but how did they actually grow? how did they reach their target market?

a strong brand, unique product positioning, template marketplace, and influencer marketing

brand in the hot seat: 📓notion

today's treasure trove

• what is notion?

• notion’s branding

• notion’s template marketplace

• notion’s influencer marketing

what is notion?

quick stats:

• youtube – 286k followers, 497 videos

• instagram – 341k followers

• facebook – 38k followers

• x/twitter – 474.8k followers

• linkedin – 641k followers

• monthly website traffic – 158m

you can tell a lot about a brand by where their following is.

even though notion is often labeled as a “note-taking” or productivity app, it’s actually super robust. closer to a no-code website builder.

users can create plans, writings, schedules, databases, even build dashboards. (I use it for my personal life, like this rating tracker for coffee shops I made 😀)

it doesn’t come as a surprise that they have a huge following on linkedin – it’s a great tool for businesses. one company I worked for used notion for all company wiki, scheduling, project and task management, etc.

notion uses a freemium business model, so most consumers can use notion for their everyday life for free, but businesses need to pay to have a shared workspace.✨

notion’s branding

the marketing website, emails, social media content, and product focus on “minimal” design aesthetic.

the idea is that notion is fast and simple to get started and build something.

one aspect I love is their logo – it’s one of those letter blocks that little kids play with. that’s because notion works like “building blocks” but as a software tool.

subtle but so on brand.

the interesting thing about their brand is that even though it’s playful, companies aren’t scared off. typically, software made for enterprise is quite buttoned up – soft blue palette, basic abstract icon logo, product with a lot of guardrails on it.

but not notion – they’re unapologetic about being playful and simple. sure, they might not be signing up fortune 500 companies, but by having a stellar product, they can continue to move upmarket.

checkout those logos in the hero area of their homepage, or little nod that a project manager might stumble upon.

while their messaging is aimed at teams, there’s a societal trend that everyone needs a tool to manage the complexity of everyday life or their “solo” projects.

notion positions itself as the solution that can be the one home for everything – your habit tracker, project management, watchlist, kanban board, vacation planner, etc.

notion’s template marketplace

imo, the big unlock for any sort of platform like notion is templates. 

even though it is infinitely customizable, no one likes “blank page” syndrome.

so, notion fast-tracks activation by highlighting their template marketplace and opening up the product so that creators can make and share (or even sell) their own templates (hey, I even have a free one I made myself for tracking job applications!)

the template marketplace solves the blank page problem but also gives users ideas they might not have thought about.

this makes the product very sticky as users are excited, start building, and continue too leverage the product in more aspects of life and business.

the marketplace could be categorized as product-led growth. one of the beautiful things about it is that notion doesn’t need engineers for this growth lever – they hire designers or even pay or partner with creators to populate it.

notion’s influencer marketing

you know that feeling when you land on your youtube homepage and the algorithm gods decide to recommend a video from years ago?

well, when notion saw that youtube influencers were using notion and already recommending, they decided to kick it up a notch and offer to partner with them to produce content that showcased how they use notion.

because these are long-form videos and “freshness” isn’t as necessary on youtube as other platforms, the influencer videos virtually work like evergreen content – delivering value way past what one would expect on instagram or linkedin.

notion also noticed that these videos work much better when the influencer is already a notion user – they’re more knowledgeable and authentic, and might even offer some templates they’ve created.

so, an engaged audience viewing a long-form pitch that still brings in users months after the video goes live? wow. it’s like a golden goose.

while youtube was incredibly valuable, they wanted to reach other audiences and channels, so they also dipped their toes into tiktok influencer marketing – and it took off. again, the best performing campaigns were from native notion users.

notion started by partnering with influencers that had audiences of 50k or more, but as tiktok proved successful, they softened that limit and included micro-influencers, too.

wrap up

the takeaways from notion are:

• your brand doesn’t need to follow the “corporate branding” rules to be successful – a great product will win out

• for platforms, template marketplaces can be a gold mine – user-generated templates by folks eager to share

• influencer marketing works best with native users – do a lot of experiments and don’t shy away from long-form video. it may be more expensive upfront, but the CAC lowers over a long campaign lifetime

imo, notion is a phenomenal tool that continues to innovate – they recently released AI and full publishable notion websites. 

but, can they grab fortune 500 market share with their current marketing? we’ll see.

thanks for reading and I’d love to hear what thoughts you have about notion and this teardown. (and read the other deep dives here)

✌️,

tom from marketer gems