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Media Relations Strategy
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Boston-based Quickbase is one of the top low-code platforms in the world. After spinning out of Intuit in 2019, Quickbase’s new CMO brought Alloy in to build the company’s brand awareness as part of its go-to-market strategy to penetrate the enterprise tech space. 

Quickbase’s business application development platform helps enterprises achieve operational agility, freeing them up to flex and evolve by safely connecting people, information and ideas and moving beyond the confines of traditional software development. With digital transformation efforts accelerating across enterprises, Quickbase’s solution was timely, but loud, aggressive competitors, including tech giant Microsoft, meant permeating the market would be difficult.

With limited word-of-mouth recognition, Quickbase aimed to grow its presence among enterprise and mid-market prospects while gaining endorsements from IT leaders. Alloy designed a strategic media relations program to reach these core audiences and elevate perception of the brand among IT influencers and buyers.

We started our program by announcing Quickbase’s acquisition of Cloudpipes, a leading cloud-based integration and automation platform, which improved Quickbase’s ability to integrate with a multitude of enterprise technologies. We landed coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, SDTimes and more, paving the way for a successful public relations program that ultimately resulted in increased adoption, improved perception, and influencer validation. 

  • Aggressive media relations

    With heavy media coverage of digital transformation and low-/no- code initiatives, inserting Quickbase into these conversations was a key way to build the awareness and credibility it needed to reach its upstream buying targets. We targeted a mix of top tier, technology and local press with a combination of hard news and thought leadership, ultimately doubling Quickbase’s share of voice.

  • Proprietary data

    To reach targets, Quickbase knew it needed to provide value at the enterprise and business-process levels, an approach it dubbed dual-track transformation. To prove the value of this approach, Quickbase partnered with Harvard Business Review, and we helped design a study to appeal to media and buyers alike. The resulting report found that only 22% of global executives rate their current digital transformation strategies as “very effective” — a problem Quickbase and a dual-track transformation approach solves. We created multiple media angles stemming from the report, targeting both tech and vertical publications. The survey results added fuel to our media efforts and validated Quickbase’s approach.

  • Internal influencer program

    When Quickbase hired its first CIO, Deb Gildersleeve, we knew she could be a powerful voice in reaching her peers within enterprise and mid-market prospects. With inactive social media profiles and lack of press experience, we went to work building Deb’s personal brand on LinkedIn and Twitter and her media credibility, authoring blogs and bylines on her behalf. We started with reporter introductions, landing a profile in Forbes entitled, “Quickbase’s CIO on Joining The Low-Code Software Company at a Time of High Uncertainty.” Within just three months, Deb gained a voice in low code conversations, including quotes in eight top-tier media articles. With the success of this approach, we rolled similar internal influencer programs out to other Quickbase subject matter experts. 

  • Social media alignment

    To meet Quickbase’s awareness and credibility goals, it needed an overarching integrated marketing strategy that tightly aligned organic social media, executive / company thought leadership and influencer programming with PR and content marketing. We retooled Quickbase’s social media presence on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to focus less on the brand and more on thought leadership and engagement, which led to increased engagement and web traffic from social.

In the aftermath of the disastrous 2020 Iowa Caucus, Quickbase faced major risk to brand reputation when online commentary mistakenly cited Quickbase as the official app used to report caucus results.

We provided immediate crisis counsel to help Quickbase devise a multichannel response, while also providing by-the-hour crisis monitoring. The plan worked — the rumors didn’t spread into mainstream media and there was no long-term impact to brand reputation. Following this situation, we also equipped Quickbase with a thorough crisis response strategy detailing communications processes and standards should a crisis situation ever arise again.

200+ media placements, exceeding goals by
%
x
share of voice
%
increase in website traffic from LinkedIn
%
increase in direct website traffic

With a combination of thought leadership, data and announcements, Alloy propelled Quickbase into the low-code conversation, dominating competitors in a crowded market.

Media training

Thought leadership was a cornerstone of our awareness-building efforts for Quickbase, so it was critical that the subject matter experts we used were deeply immersed in the brand’s messaging and differentiators, and that they could concisely, compellingly answer reporter questions. We put Quickbase’s SMEs through our proprietary media training to help them stay on message, block and bridge, pay attention to non-verbal cues and ultimately become sought-after, quotable spokespeople.

Social media audit and persona

To drive the social media program, Alloy audited Quickbase’s brand channels, as well as social channels of internal influencers, competitors, aspirational brands and external influencers, to identify immediate opportunities and establish a clear path forward for the implementation of long-term social marketing strategies. The result was a social media persona unique to Quickbase — we called her Allison — an up-and-coming software engineer.

Newsjacking

With low-code beginning to dominate media discussions and an aggressive field of competitors, newsjacking was a key part of our media strategy. Inserting Quickbase into existing conversations helped to establish the brand and position it alongside its well-established competitors. For example, when Microsoft launched Power Automate to automate repetitive tasks, we positioned Quickbase’s chief product and technology officer to discuss the launch as an indicator of robotic process automation and low-code adoption. The resulting Forbes article positioned Microsoft as “catching up” to advanced solutions like Quickbase.

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“Alloy is by far the most strategic, creative, and data-driven firm I have ever worked with. Not sure what we would do without them.”

— Shannon C., Sr. Manager of Content & Comms
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