Vitis PR was originally retained to work for Edge Testing Solutions, an award-winning software testing consultancy based in Glasgow, Scotland. Edge Testing was acquired by Eurofins Digital Testing, the world’s leading testing and Quality Assurance (QA) specialists, in April 2018. Edge was brought under the Eurofins Digital Testing umbrella with cyber security and devices testing businesses.
Challenges
Originally, Edge was well-known in Glasgow and across Scotland, with local and national media covering the company’s news, thanks to its original Belshill headquarters.
However, Edge Testing was not so well-known with media outside of Scotland, so the company appointed Vitis PR in March 2017 to raise awareness in the rest of UK and to support its position as one of the fastest growing independent software testing companies across the country ahead of its 10-year anniversary.
Once acquired by Eurofins Digital Testing, new complementary divisions also needed promotion.
Solution
As always, the Vitis PR team spent time getting to know the client and their priorities, to create a pipeline of content to support the marketing strategy. Vitis PR created a campaign promoting the business’ strengths and differentiators, including the Edge Academy, client wins and thought-leadership.
Vitis PR set out promoting the software testing education and learning program, Edge Academy. This classroom and on the job based training with tech, software, testing and recruitment media. The team also created editorials around how in-house education programs like the Edge Academy were assisting companies like Edge Testing in filing the skills gap and offering opportunities to school leavers, career changers and those going back to work.
Once the 100th graduate had passed through the Academy, Vitis PR drafted a series of releases focusing on the candidates and their backgrounds to promote them and the Edge Academy, and the PR team also used those to secure profiles on and inclusion of new recruits into wider Women in Tech and business media round ups.
Additionally, the Digital Test Hubs (DTH) were the first of their kind in the UK. Edge Testing had launched the first DTH in Scotland 2013 to provide low-cost, on demand services and then in 2017, a second Digital Test Hub was opened in Birmingham, England, with a third following in Manchester in 2019.
Vitis PR targeted Midlands and software media with stories around customer wins secured from the DTH and its use in securing and enabling smooth digital transformation. Vitis PR also pitched content around offshoring of services to other countries compared to the ability, via the DTH, to nearshore so all work done for clients was done in the UK by local teams.
With a number of new customer wins across all sectors under its belt and an expanding team that brought exceptional expertise to the table, Edge Testing was in a prime position to offer insights into various topics of interest, from open source, performance testing and DevOps to digital transformation, mobile and future-proofing testing practices across the public sector.
By creating articles around open source, DevOps, testing in healthcare, smart device testing, red teaming and more, the firm’s testing experts generated thought-provoking and useful content.
Results
Vitis PR was able to generate positive coverage around the key themes of recruitment, Digital Test Hub and testing expertise, but the team expanded the media relations activities to incorporate profiles on specific news such as the Eurofins’ acquisition in April 2018, senior appointments expansion including new office locations, employee numbers, service offerings and additional client wins and multi-million deals.
Coverage highlights from those include The Scotsman, The Telegraph, Latest Software Testing News, Manchester Digital, New Digital Age and TEST Magazine.
Vitis PR also arranged a reporter from The Scotsman to visit the company’s Belshill headquarters. Following that office visit, Edge Testing, which had since been acquired by Eurofins Digital Testing, started opening new office locations in the North of England and London to accommodate its expanding team. Those new office locations in Manchester and Leeds brought recruitment opportunities and delivered services to clients in those regions, which allowed Vitis PR to begin reaching out to media across Manchester and the North West, and Yorkshire.
Following those introductions to Tier 1 regional media contacts, Vitis PR secured coverage across media titles in both the Midlands and North with The Business Desk, Prolific North, BQ Live, Insider, Yorkshire Post, Crewe Chronicle, Manchester Evening News, Business Manchester and About Manchester.
Once Commissum came on board in 2020 providing cyber security testing and advice, Vitis PR was able to widen out the media targets to include security and cyber titles in the team’s outreach for promotion of Eurofins Digital and Security Testing arms combining offering traditional software testing with a full cyber security portfolio to clients.
The Commissum acquisition itself was covered by The Business Desk, Digital Test News, Edinburgh News, Global Security Magazine, Scottish Business News, DIGIT, Insider and The Scotsman.
Once Edge Testing was a part of Eurofins Digital Testing, with the Commissum cyber security division, new client win releases were a regular occurrence with Vitis PR securing coverage in multiple media including The Business Desk, The Herald, Manchester Digital, Insider, Edinburgh News, About Manchester, Prolific North and The Scotsman.
Client reference
“Working with the team at Vitis has been an absolute pleasure. Their knowledge and drive promoted an excellent relationship and enabled us to spread the news about our successes, ever expanding technical and business capability, our people and our opinions and thoughts to a wide bandwidth of industries. They have a great ‘can do ’attitude and I look forward to working with them again’.”
Richard Mort, UK Marketing Manager