Starting new company - drone mapping

[nica]

Hi everyone,
I'm preparing myself for a huge step - I want to start my own company doing the mapping with drone and 3D modelling. I'm originally a surveyor and already have experience with photogrammetry and drones so I'm not really afraid of the technical part. But as I have never been really a sales person I'm curious about the possible ways how to get in contact with the customers.
How did you get your first drone mapping job? Did you use some marketing tools to let people know about you or did you simply knew a customer requiring drone mapping?
Thanks for sharing your experience and for any tips.
Nikola

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Hello Nikola.
Exciting times for you.

I'm not into mapping or such as yet, though it does hold great interest to me as it's a very cool process.

Tell me, who gets mapping / 3D modelling done ?
Property developers, demolition companies, farmers ?

Just good to know your market, then it's a lot easier to develop a marketing plan.

I would think if you know who your customers are, what sort of mapping they want / need, you could easily get out there and map some things yourself, structures, land, etc like your clients would be wanting done.

Then very important, create a good website, with perhaps half a dozen good example cases that you've done above.
Get onto the search engines and start them scanning your site and get you into search results.
You also need a website to reference people to on business cards etc.

If you are into Facebook, a lot of people now use the business page as their website, and social media is a VERY big part of many business plans / getting known.
I'm not into that though, probably should be, but think it's a bit of a shallow world so have resisted this far.

Then network, cold call, check out any relative client associations you can call on or advertise through to their members.
Personally I have been in biz a bit over 20 years, used to do a lot of direct mail to customer bases, it's not bad but a start up it is really better to get face to face, or specialised advertising to get some inquiries coming in

Good luck with it, I'm happy to put some thoughts down if you want to elaborate on your target market and sorts of work for this tech.

 

[AlanMS]

Hello Nikola,
Where about in the world are you situated? I am trying to get a golf driving range surveyed in Florida (USA) but it seems all the local companies are too busy to help. We expect to have this requirement at driving ranges all over the US and UK so perhaps you can help?
Let me know and good luck with the new business venture!
Regards
Alan

 

[nica]

Hello Nikola,
Where about in the world are you situated? I am trying to get a golf driving range surveyed in Florida (USA) but it seems all the local companies are too busy to help. We expect to have this requirement at driving ranges all over the US and UK so perhaps you can help?
Let me know and good luck with the new business venture!
Regards
Alan

Hi Alan,
I'm based in Czech Republic and Switzerland. Sorry I guess I can't help you with the golf driving ranges in Florida, but if you'll have some a bit closer, let me know ;-)

 

[nica]

Hello Nikola.
Exciting times for you.

I'm not into mapping or such as yet, though it does hold great interest to me as it's a very cool process.

Tell me, who gets mapping / 3D modelling done ?
Property developers, demolition companies, farmers ?

Just good to know your market, then it's a lot easier to develop a marketing plan.

I would think if you know who your customers are, what sort of mapping they want / need, you could easily get out there and map some things yourself, structures, land, etc like your clients would be wanting done.

Then very important, create a good website, with perhaps half a dozen good example cases that you've done above.
Get onto the search engines and start them scanning your site and get you into search results.
You also need a website to reference people to on business cards etc.

If you are into Facebook, a lot of people now use the business page as their website, and social media is a VERY big part of many business plans / getting known.
I'm not into that though, probably should be, but think it's a bit of a shallow world so have resisted this far.

Then network, cold call, check out any relative client associations you can call on or advertise through to their members.
Personally I have been in biz a bit over 20 years, used to do a lot of direct mail to customer bases, it's not bad but a start up it is really better to get face to face, or specialised advertising to get some inquiries coming in

Good luck with it, I'm happy to put some thoughts down if you want to elaborate on your target market and sorts of work for this tech.

Thanks for this amazing summary.
I have already few projects from different industries prepared so I can show the results and outputs. Right now I'm preparing the website and going through some administrative stuff.
I was thinking about using Facebook and the search engines for getting a bit more to the public, I will give it a try. And then yes, it's more about getting the contacts, so I guess some calls and talks with the potential customers :-D

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Cheers Nikola,
I think social media will suit you very well, cheap way to get word out there.
Have a website, but also build Facebook landing page too, and (as much as I'm not a fan) even do instagram too.

If you put some very nice results / 3D models of some known things up, people tend to spread these things if interesting to them / their network of friends, then it's just time to start all this rolling and developing.

Eventually things start hitting people you want, like Alan above, he has come on here and posted his inquiry (first post here too), just from your original message

Good luck with it.