SEO, internet marketing and social media marketing are buzzwords that tend to overwhelm a lot of drone business owners. Confused by the wealth of information, drone business owners often tend to ignore this business aspect. And the end result? Zilch. Nada. Nothing at all.

In this blog post we present some strategies for building a solid online presence. With thousands of people chucking their traditional jobs for a drone life, competition is intense. And some basic knowledge about SEO and online marketing can give YOUR drone business greater visibility. We have some solid Tips and Tricks which are guaranteed to give you a competitive edge.

Publishing Engaging and Original Content Will Bring Greater Visibility to Your Drone Business

Okay. So, you have built a good looking website. But, is your drone business failing to attract customers? This is because there are hundreds of drone businesses like you attempting to woo customers. In order to successfully build up a customer base, you need to ensure that your website shows up prominently in search results.  So, how do you do that?

Firstly you need to put out original content out there. Do not even think of plagiarizing content. Search engines have sophisticated algorithms which crawl through millions of pages. And if you are caught “stealing” content, your website will be heavily penalized. This will push down your page rank, and you will not pop up in search results making your business virtually untraceable.

A UAV pilot looking to market a drone business can start off by sharing his/her drone footage. YouTube is a great platform for sharing videos.  While posting on YouTube can help your drone business gain greater visibility, remember that there is no sure shot way of preventing your video from being downloaded. In order to protect your content from being stolen, we recommend watermarking your videos.

Blogging can help establish your credibility as a drone business owner. Write on a topic that your target audience would like to read about – a topic that addresses common pain points. For instance, if you are a UAV pilot taking up powerline inspection jobs, highlight the various advantages of using a drone – Faster execution, lower costs and reduced human intervention.

Pro Tip – You can even turn your blog post into a presentation and share it on YouTube, LinkedIn and Slideshare. This is a great way of re-purposing your content and publishing more content faster.

Once you have published the content on your site, do not forget to shares your content on social media. This great article shares the best time slots for sharing content on social media. Share your content in these recommended time slots to receive maximum engagement.

Optimize Your Drone Business Website Using Backlinks and Metatags

Backlinks help improve your websites ranking tremendously. There are two kinds of backlinks – external and internal. External backlinks are those that link to your site. If a website with higher ranking references your content, this greatly helps boost your website’s ranking. However, if a website with lower ranking backlinks to your site, this does not help much.

Internal backlinks are those which refer to your own content on another page within the site. So, for instance, let’s say you are writing a blog post on “Data Acquisition and Processing Techniques in 3D Mapping”. You can add in an internal backlink directing folks to your previous blog post, “Construction Mapping”. Google gives greater importance to external backlinks. And rightly so. Getting a reputable business to share your content is incredibly hard.

Adding in the right meta-tags is another important part of your SEO strategy. Meta tags is backend data that helps Google crawl your content and present it before the right audience. So, if you have a YouTube video, “Drone Video of a Luxurious Villa in New Mexico”, these are some of the meta-tags that you can add:

• Real Estate Marketing
• Real Estate Video
• Drone Footage
• UAV Footage
• Phantom 4 Footage

You can add in meta-tags to your website back end as well. This metatag analyser helps you determine how Google views your site.

Using Facebook Ads to Market Your Drone Business

In a bid to appease the Congress after the Cambridge Analytica leak, Facebook said that it will kill access to third party data sources like Experian and Epsilon. Facebook has more than 1,200 targeting criteria (such as purchase behaviour and income). More than half of these targeting criteria come from third party data sources.  GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is another reason for this move.

In spite of this, Facebook still remains a great platform for reaching out to people. For instance, you can still create “custom audiences”. Custom audiences are your own lists which you can upload and target via Facebook Ads. You can also create “Lookalike audiences” based off these custom audiences.

Geo Targeting is another option. Using Facebook’s geo-targeting, you can present your ads to an audience at a specific postal address. This tool can be particularly useful when you have thousands of prospects present at a particular location. Possibilities are endless. For instance, let’s presume you are UAV pilot looking to take up real estate jobs. If you are based in Boston, targeting realtors participating at NAR’s upcoming conference might be an option worth considering

Email Marketing - How to Get Your Email in the Client’s Inbox

Email marketing has been around forever and continues to be a great way of engaging with, and generating business from your mailing list. In the world of internet marketing, folks who opt in to be a part of your mailing list are classified as “warm leads”.  Warm leads are people who know and trust you – People willing to spend money. You can expect your conversions to be far higher if you are pitching your offer to these folks.

The first rule for achieving great conversions – Provide great content. Provide content that is actually useful to your prospects and existing clients. Not many people are likely to open and check out your newsletter if you provide crappy content, or are overly aggressive in pushing your business. Make sure you use a subject line which is catchy, with the right keywords and congruent with the content of your newsletter. Data shows that a subject line with 60 to 70 characters has the highest read rate.

I would like to take a moment here to talk about Email Deliverability. Email Deliverability is nothing but making sure that your email lands up in the client’s inbox. And not in the spam. So, how do ensure this?

Firstly, make sure that your list quality is excellent. Do NOT even think of buying a list. Sorry. You will have to do the hard work of getting folks to actually opt in and be a part of your list. No shortcuts here. You also need to regularly clean your list. You can do this using a service like KickBox. Why is this important?  According to statistics, 30% of email accounts shut down every year. This mean that 30% of your emails do not get delivered. Now if you continue using an old list, and the percentage of bounces keep on increasing, inbox providers (Like GMAIL and YAHOO) will start penalizing your address. And start treating your address as spam.

Another way to improve the reputation of your site? If people actually respond back to your newsletter, this is viewed very favorably by the inbox providers. This bumps up the reputation of your email and site. So, how do you get your list to respond back? Offer a free gift which encourages your list to engage with you. You can offer a whitepaper, a presentation or a webinar which addresses some common pain points.

Pro Tip for improving Deliverability - Make sure that your list can easily unsubscribe. You do not want folks deleting your email even without opening it. Better to have such folks off the list.

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  Hope is truly the driving force in us all. Finding someone you believe in, and who believes in you, braids that hope into success.
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