The challenge
Engineering Real Results (ERR) trains people for careers in plumbing, gas, electrics, welding and renewables, with training centres across Yorkshire, Southampton, Wolverhampton, Hertfordshire and Essex. Its employer-endorsed qualifications attract career-changers starting out in a trade as well as working professionals renewing their certifications, and its courses combine virtual reality practice with workshop and on-site experience.
The UK needs more skilled tradespeople, but a training provider still has to persuade people that a trade is a realistic next step, often when they're settled in another career. ERR's brief to us had two parts: build national awareness of its courses and centres and, crucially, earn backlinks from authoritative sites so that prospective learners find ERR when they search for training.
Our approach
Our digital PR for ERR runs in seasonal bursts, timed to the months when readers are thinking about their heating, their homes or a change of career. Each campaign draws on the people who teach ERR's courses and, because links are the priority, every idea is chosen for its chances of earning one. Director Ricky Sharma and tutors including Mark Ingram, ERR's technical gas and plumbing tutor, give journalists the kind of hands-on know-how that comes from years on the tools.
Much of that know-how becomes household advice: when to turn the heating on and off, how to fix cold-top radiators, the thermostat setting engineers agree on and the plumbing "hacks" that can end in a big bill. Gordon Clarke has explained solar panel payback times for Ideal Home, and the team has shared the red flags that give away a cowboy builder.
Alongside the advice, we make the case for a career in the trades. Stories built on ONS vacancy figures and the UK Trade Skills Index, which forecasts that more than 73,000 plumbers will be needed by 2032, show readers that skilled trades offer stable, well-paid work. Local stories, such as a Doncaster student who trained as a plumber after waiting three months for a boiler repair, show what that change looks like in practice.
The outcome
Backlinks were the priority, and across 22 campaign months ERR has earned 453 of them, from sites with an average Moz Domain Authority of 68. The same work has produced 592 pieces of coverage, an average of 27 a month, in titles including The Sun, the Mirror, the Daily Express, OK!, Ideal Home and FE News, and regional papers including the Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo and Express & Star, with an estimated 17.7 million opportunities to see.
Along the way, ERR's director and tutors have become regular named sources on heating, plumbing and home energy.