How Webflow grows with product loops

Hey Indie Hackers!

My name is Omid — formerly early marketing employee at Webflow turned Indie Hacker! I’ve been lurking this community for a few years now and have been a long time listener of the podcast (literally the only thing I looked forward to during the early days of lockdown lol).

I think it’s time for me to give back and help some of my peers with marketing/product.

I want to talk about in-product viral loops.

I know, this topic is talked about a lot.

But I want to give an example of how we approached it at Webflow (and maybe it can spark some inspiration within your own projects).

Some of the fastest growing B2C/B2B companies (with billion dollar valuations) that I’ve seen do one thing really well: They help people make money through their platform.

Airbnb: Hosts
Notion: Templates
Shopify/WordPress: Plugin ecosystem
Webflow: Cloneables

The idea is to create viral loops within your product that encourage people to share your product with others.

For example, Webflow focused heavily on the Webflow Showcase (https://webflow.com/websites/likes?c=1) as a growth driver. People (and influencers) create UI kits and website templates and encourage their audiences to clone them. The only way you can clone one of these templates is to create a Webflow account — giving it a viral loop effect.

Customer signs up —> Builds website —> Showcases their website as a cloneable —> New user signs up to use the cloneable —> Repeat

Okay, but why would someone put in the time to create a cloneable?

Many Webflow customers create websites for clients. Creating cloneables shows that they know what they’re doing (and it helps them get more clients).

There’s also a Webflow affiliate program.

So influencers create cloneables and then share an affiliate link to their cloneable’s with their audience — boosting conversion rates for their affiliate revenue because there's an incentive attached to it. (Example: https://webflow.com/blog/top-webflow-affiliate-jan-losert)

Once someone gets good at creating cloneables, they can also sign up to sell templates in the Webflow Template Marketplace — where template designers get 80% of the revenue on each template they sell.

So, because Webflow has this structure set up, people are constantly creating for the platform — pushing it forward.

I’ve seen designers make 5, 6, even 7 figures a year doing this. It’s very powerful.

And because they see that they’re making money, they keep doing it.

In essence, the community creates for the platform and helps market it to new customers.

It doesn’t make sense for every product, but it can for some.

So, if any of this makes sense for your product, ask yourself: “How can I help my customers make money promoting my product?”

If you want to discover more marketing/product tips consider checking out my website Marketer Milk (https://www.marketermilk.com)