NOUVELLES SUR LES UAV COMMERCIAUX

How to Market Drone Surveying Equipment


A look into the targets, objectives, people, and programs behind the marketing at Microdrones

Microdrones works closely with our distributors to provide training, customer service support, and lead generation through innovative marketing programs to help drive success. That’s why at this year’s Distributor Meeting, the marketing team presented an overview of the programs, campaigns, tactics, resources, and content that helps tell the Microdrones story. Hint- it's part of the Marketing Octopus.  Learn more about the innovative approach to marketing at Microdrones in the video below and find out just what is a Marketing Octopus

Meet the Microdrones Marketing Team

The team behind the marketing at Microdrones consists of Mike Dziok, Vice President of Global Marketing, Bret Burghdurf, Director of Marketing, Justin Palmer, Creative Services Manager, Damon Maldonado, Project Manager, Online Marketing and Ashley Love, Marketing Coordinator. Together they help orchestrate all aspects of the global marketing at Microdrones. During the distributor meeting, Mike Dziok led the discussion and overview.

Marketing 101

After introducing the people behind the marketing, a brief exercise was held to help identify targets and marketing objectives. This practice helps focus the goals of marketing to implement plans and tactics to try and make targets take action. The steps begin by describing your ideal target customer(s) for drone survey equipment and software. Next, identify the best way to reach them; email campaigns, advertising, demo days, etc. Then ask, “What do you want them to DO or to BELIEVE relative to drone equipment or software?”   Following these steps will yield a focused and achievable marketing objective, i.e., in what ways might we get survey managers in mid-size engineering companies to schedule a meeting with us to discuss drone surveying equipment and software?

Create a focused marketing objective

The Marketing Octopus

Next- if there’s one thing to take away from this presentation, it’s the world-famous Marketing Octopus, coined by Mike Dziok. The Marketing Octopus is a way to illustrate all of the various marketing touchpoints and the way to tell the story through content creation and delivery.

“A lot of what we are explaining can get very detailed and technical,” says Dziok. “It’s challenging to write about, so one of the things I always talk about is the marketing octopus. If you visualize an octopus, it has these eight arms, its mouth, and a head. The brain of the octopus is content- the raw information that we turn into finished marketing products. Those products are pushed out through each arm of the marketing octopus, things like events, podcasts, social media, or trade journals. And then those are brought back into the mouth of the marketing octopus to consume and digest and turned into leads and opportunities.”

As Dziok explained, the arms of the Octopus are all the ways to reach the ideal target audience and deliver the marketing message.  Then, if you can picture, these arms attempt to grab prospects and feed them into the sales and marketing automated system, to give the sales team the opportunity to qualify prospects, cultivate leads, and help uncover sales opportunities for drone surveying equipment.

Marketing Resources

To aid with marketing campaigns and content, the marketing department at Microdrones has created several resources that distributors and end-user can access. The first place to check is the Drone Surveying News Page on Microdrones.com (Bookmark this link!)  This is where all of the marketing content is released and cataloged. Once the content is activated on the news page it then gets distributed through all the arms of- you guessed it, the Marketing Octopus-, email, social media, events, search engine marketing, and other campaigns.

The drone surveying news page is an excellent resource for both the Microdrones sales team, dealers, and their sales team to quickly find and share content about drone surveying equipment.

Other resources provided by the Microdrones marketing team include a library of pictures of systems, payloads, products, and work in the field, a style guide for presentations, logos, and fonts, and a distributor toolbox with an array of features and news to assist our selling partners.  For information and access, be sure to connect with a regional sales manager from Microdrones.

Picture resources at Microdrones

Providing marketing resources for distributors is a key function of the Microdrones marketing team. They’ve developed a marketing system and built connections with distributors to foster a symbiotic relationship. “The nice thing is our content library gets fed into our sales and marketing automation system,” explains Dziok. “That means as we whittle leads down into opportunities, we are providing our distributors with a high-quality prospect, who’s ready to engage.”

Put the Microdrones marketing team to work

The marketing team at Microdrones is always working on new content and ways to deliver it. “We want to make sure our distributors are aware of the services that we can provide,” says Dziok. “That we can make them the star and backbone of everything we are working on in marketing. We really want to invite them to bring us their marketing objectives. We want to help, and we are eager to do, and we’ll put together some great things.”

If you or your company is interested in purchasing drone surveying equipment, schedule a meeting with one of our sales representatives today. Maybe you’ll be featured in some future marketing content.