Case Study: GitLab

Building a Marketing Flywheel with The New Stack

GitLab is a Platform Sponsor of The New Stack, contributing over 15 articles so far, hosting a Day of Podcasting at GitLab Commit Brooklyn 2019, and a Pancake Breakfast at TechCrunch Enterprise 2019. The result of the sponsorship created a “flywheel effect” for GitLab’s marketing program that has continued to generate global awareness for the company’s brand, customers, and partners.

“I ran a poll amongst developer communities about which publications they read the most. The New Stack was in the top two.”

— Natasha Woods, GitLab

Publishing contributed articles is at the heart of a TNS Platform Sponsorship. GitLab utilized this in several ways to bolster awareness for their customers via case studies. Those who were unable to speak with the press were often open to submitting a written case study article. They first publish a revised version on The New Stack’s website that drives traffic back to GitLab’s website, upcoming webinars or other timely events, and the original version two weeks later on their own site.

This strategy has been so successful that GitLab has repeated it with European media outlets. “We built a marketing pipeline with The New Stack that has given us a flywheel effect — more coverage, more exposure, and more trust for GitLab and our customers and partners,” Natasha Woods, GitLab director of corporate communications said.

“Our Sopra Steria case study performed very well in a French media outlet, which led to a mainstream IT print publication approaching us about being included in an interview on remote work and DevOps. Once that came out, we were approached by two mainstream news channels in France to be included in segments about remote work — all because of the format for promoting case studies we developed with The New Stack.”

TNS analytics reports and customized, quarterly calls help GitLab make better decisions about topics and approach. The success of their Redbox case study prompted the marketing team to change their case study OKRs to publish first on TNS versus their own website. Seeing the success of articles authored by speakers from their Commit event prompted GitLab to offer it for every event, resulting in this one by Nico Meisenzahl of white duck that received over 15,000 pageviews and helped drive event registrations. It was a win-win: GitLab promoted its event while the speaker received brand exposure with a key developer audience.

Proactive, editorial support from TNS is second-to-none, said Woods. “You use your journalistic backgrounds to help guide us to write better content for your publication, which is a huge value that other outlets don’t provide.” As an added benefit, sponsors are top-of-mind for TNS as industry opportunities arise. GitLab had applied to participate in TechCrunch Enterprise 2019, but its efforts were not bearing fruit. However, “because of our sponsorship, we were invited to speak on a panel at TechCrunch Enterprise hosted by The New Stack. That would not have been possible otherwise.”

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