If you want to generate more drone photography leads, you may need to pay more attention than with the regular photo business and career. Otherwise, you will lose many potential customers to your competitors. To get started, you will need to determine who is your target audience and then set a website based on this. This site must be well-optimized and be filled with as many photos of your work as you can. If not, people might not consider hiring you.
Other lead generation strategies will be focused on handling the previous ones since your website is crucial for all of them. Meanwhile, not targeting the right audience just ruins every possibility of clients.
To ensure you do well after those steps, we have compiled the rest of the strategies you can utilize for an efficient marketing plan.
Thus, take the time to go over the details and ensure to take notes even for the smallest and “simple” aspects to add them to your weak points if necessary.
Defining Your Audience
Going back to our mention, you can only start lead generation if you first define your audience. If you don’t, you will fail to create high-quality leads and only get prospects that won’t convert.
This is the most important thing because it will ensure your marketing efforts succeed in the short and long run.
Sharing your content with the right people can result in strong leads and better results for future lead generation strategies.
How do you begin this step? To define your audience, you need to create a customer profile.
This persona should reflect the interests, location, behavior, demographics, or other factors that can set a specific standard of whom you consider your lead. This customer persona can be used to target your audience later.
All your content and marketing efforts should focus on this group. In the case of drone photography, it can be a bit wide considering any person in terms of age and location can need your services.
However, a good approach would be to focus on the type of people they are. Do they want to sell a property and take aerial photos? Maybe have some cool shots for a video they are making?
For this, you will also need to focus on the final niche. Drone photography can be for people, properties, and many more.
Create a Website Next
Many photographers settle for the simplest gallery site or only work with social media to build a portfolio. Don’t do the same and take the time to go over a website that Is more than a gallery as well.
Consider what your business wants to achieve, and you’ll find that a website sounds the perfect match since it isn’t about showing your photos but also setting conversion pages for leads.
However, focusing on the gallery and portfolio part, a website is the best you can use to market your drone photography work. Websites are the best when it comes to establishing your credibility within the visual arts industry.
But for it to work for lead generation, you must include the following:
- Set an “About Me” that includes your photographic style and all the details of your education, career, or anything relevant to your photography.
- Contact details or a form to help leads get in touch. Using both is viable as well.
- Set a page for booking or scheduling a session with the details the client can provide.
- Your best photos on a portfolio page.
- Pricing sheets or quote form to request one.
- Client testimonials and previous work.
Even if you are not a web designer, many resources will help you create a site decent enough. Then, you could choose to rely on the old yet vital WordPress.
Some options include Leadpages and Wix. You can use the drag and drop settings to design your site in no time with some templates as well.
Optimizing Your Website
It’s one thing to create a website. It’s another thing to get people to visit it and ensure they are converting into leads later.
SEO (search engine optimization) is the fastest and most cost-effective way to do this. Even if you bet for paid options, SEO is always needed for organic and valuable traffic.
Small business websites can achieve success with this since it matches searches made on Google, Yahoo!, and other search engines to your site.
You get ranked higher in search engines, and people are more likely to find you. This allows you to generate leads naturally.
You can control many SEO elements on your website. The following are some you need to pay the most attention to:
- Internal links: Linking to one page on your website from another to keep them engaged and drive more sales qualified leads.
- Meta-descriptions: These refer to the text of the pages and must be following keywords.
- Keyword optimization: Selecting one primary keyword for each webpage and then implementing it into content and meta-data (the latter mentioned before).
- Alt-text: Upload images and include descriptive text with the main keywords. This will allow you to distinguish between what a visual searcher would read and what a robot might see to avoid any issues with potential leads.
- Post content frequently: Google loves fresh content. This is a sign that your website’s content has not been neglected and that you are responding to users’ needs. This doesn’t need to be about your services all the time but rather content like blogs.
- Proper header tags: These tags include the H1, H2, and H3 tags, which set titles and subtitles. Or just headings or subheadings. They set a specific structure for the pages and organize them. This helps search engines to recognize the keywords and value you are using and providing.
The fundamentals of optimizing your site for search engines are not difficult.
You start by thinking about your customers. Next, you brainstorm potential keywords that they might type into Google. Finally, you ensure those keywords optimally appear throughout your website.
Although SEO can be complicated, these are the essentials. So, don’t overthink it.
Remember that many people are likely to be focusing their business or shot in a particular area. When you do keyword research, be wide about the ones you consider, especially in this field.
Some might be searching for things like “aerial photography in New Jersey” or maybe “hire drone video for a party in LA.” You can use these local terms to your advantage when creating your SEO strategy.
General ones are less likely to engage, and short tail keywords (with one or two words) are too competitive and less specific.
Do You Need a Newsletter? Absolutely
Many marketers believe that email is dead. But what if we told you that the email is alive and well?
Email has lost some relevance due to the advent of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. Today, however, many people check their emails multiple times a day.
Facebook and other social media platforms are trying to surpass email by allowing users to sign up for messenger updates from their favorite brands. However, email continues to be more reliable and secure for business purposes or just more serious connections.
Even though you may have millions upon millions of Facebook friends, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the only one who has access to it. It is very difficult for Facebook to export the contact information of these followers. The same happens with other social media platforms.
You are the owner and creator of your email list. No matter what happens to your contacts, you can still keep them. You can export them even if the email provider ceases to exist in order to build relationships and book future bookings.
This is where a newsletter can be useful. You can email your prospects every time you publish a new article that inspires, educates, or challenges them.
Your newsletter content can be adapted to other areas more than just a bunch of words about drones and photography without any sense. Consider these:
- The latest news from the studio and behind-the-scenes glimpses.
- Trends about the industry but not directly about your business. Only a call to action must be included in those cases.
- Present new work.
- Specials and promotions for the holidays.
- Keep in touch with clients from the past.
It is easy to communicate with them because they check their emails every day. They are more likely to be interested in your offer if you approach them in this way.
It is vital to send both useful content and promotional emails. We recommend sharing stories, showing work, and being helpful with tips and insights. Don’t bombard them with promotional or booking requests.
Lead Magnets Are a Must
You can offer a “lead magnet” to your prospects for free in exchange for their email address and possibly other basic information. This will help build the previous list or just have their contact info for nurturing and following up purposes.
Your contact list is your most valuable asset as a small business owner or even with a large one.
You should do everything possible to increase the number and quality of your email addresses each week. These people might be ready to purchase soon, even if they aren’t yet ready to buy.
Lead magnets can include eBooks, checklists, or case studies.
You could make a short and printable offering tops for aerial drone photography people would like to get for free. The real cost? They turn into leads for future nurturing.
Just make sure it is valuable and that you are not losing lots of time in the process, so the lead quality is worth it as well.
Learn How to Start a Blog & Do It
If you have decided to make a website (which we hope you did), this one is easy and will be key for your SEO and other strategies.
Now, we know it is not always clear how a blog can help you gain new clients. But here we are to help you.
First, you can bet on more SEO and optimization in other aspects. Also, you are providing value to leads and search engines; again, love this.
On the other hand, you can build awareness, trust, and an audience thanks to it. But what does it take to have a good blog?
Let’s start with the basics. Your blog should be easy to read and appealing to the eyes. Your audience should find something unique in your blog as well.
It is a great way to ensure that your posts are useful and valuable by asking your audience. Then, answer the question in detail and create a plan for action for your audience.
This is called a “call to action.” This button is located at the bottom of the page or can be linked to a helpful piece of content, such as a checklist and free course. We mentioned this before.
You might consider allowing comments on your page. Your readers can ask questions and receive answers if they want to know more. This leads generation strategy will help you understand your audience and show you how to capture them.
While blogging may seem overwhelming at first glance, it will become much simpler once you master batching.
Batching is simply the act of completing a set of similar tasks quickly (e.g., all your monthly blog posts or social media posts). Batching allows you to plan and strategize better.
You can also spend less time on marketing tasks each day and more time crafting.
Add Guest Blogging to the List Too
Guest posting on a blog is another way for you to generate leads.
Both you and your brand win when guest posting is a viable option. You reach new people, build your expertise, and they receive free content for their blogs.
Reach out to other creatives in your industry or closely related. Tell them you admire their work but lack perspective.
Offer to write a blog article that fills that gap. They receive content for their blog, as well as the bonus of the missing perspective. Your website also gets promotions in the process, and it isn’t exactly free for the other party.
Some brands might pay you to guest post on your blogs or offer other deals based upon traffic and readers.
SEO is something that some websites or bloggers care about (as they should) and the main reason they invite guests to help them. You can do the same for people who are trying to do the exact same thing.
You Need to Use Social Media
Even if you have had social media accounts for years, the chances are that they aren’t being fully utilized, or they are personal ones without lots of followers due to the old trend of just following anyone.
For a business, especially one like drone photography which depends a lot on visuals, it is more than just connecting.
It is impossible to have only one interaction with potential clients and expect them to return for more. To run a successful social media page, you must have positive relationships with your followers and make sure each lead is qualified in terms of being a potential client.
A key rule for social media management is to include equal amounts of industry-related and brand-related content within your marketing strategy.
Brand-related content is one that includes information about your company, services, case studies, and other pertinent information.
Other people share Industry-related content in your industry. You might share a post about a blog by a trusted drone photographer or a news story that has an impact on your industry or audience.
No matter the subject, you should always tie that outside perspective back into your brand. How do you respond to this situation? What additional value can you offer? It is important to consider whether the content will help or hurt your brand.
You might also post personal photos or videos about your work, family, pets, and personal values. People want to connect to people and not brands. But reduce the number of those posts.
If you’re just getting started in social media marketing, we recommend you start with Pinterest or Instagram since they are the most visual ones for drone photography lead generation.
You can show your work and build a personal brand. You can promote your blog on Pinterest and gain leads.
Drone photographers should only be on two platforms, `but you can try others when having more time and knowledge.
Make an Impressive Portfolio
Portfolio websites are a great way of attracting your next client. It should contain your best photos of real estate.
Yes, we mentioned this previously during the website creation. But what we mean with this section is: Focus more on it than 90% of your other pages.
You should have different shots and make sure you show how capable you are with the drone and in the business overall. Your portfolio should also look great on both desktop and mobile.
Your website could have a page that lists key services and prices. This page could be used to price photos of real estate properties or anything you decide to focus on.
Website builders make it simple to manage your portfolio and add pages when you need them. This will enable your website to grow along with your career.
You should choose the best template for your portfolio to showcase your work and still have enough options for the rest of the pages we mentioned in the beginning.
Use LinkedIn as Your Other Social Media Platform
LinkedIn can be used for lead generation. Yes, we remember what we said about two social media platforms. Still, this one has quite the potential for drone photographers who are trying to focus on businesses or specific clients.
How can you make the platform work for your lead generation goals? How can you generate drone photography leads?
Keep this in mind before anything else: LinkedIn is your online resume. This is why it is important to have a good profile for people to be able to trust you before we dive into the strategy itself.
It is crucial to optimize your site and to learn how to use it best. We will help you with the basics, as this can be quite complex:
- Make your profile stand out.
Your profile should be original. Someone should feel that they can trust and know you after reading it.
Upload the best photo of your company and professional image. Add as many drone photos of your own as you can and vary them based on your niche or if you decide to go for the general style.
Next, write a concise summary.
The summary should include your professional background and experiences. This section contains information about you, your career highlights, and why you decided to focus on this field.
Many people won’t scroll to your entire career history if you don’t provide a concise summary. Focus on the most important details and only provide the most relevant information.
When discussing your work history, don’t just list when you took some photos, etc. This section should be formatted like a resume with bullet points that highlight the accomplishments.
In the process, it is important to maintain a professional yet casual writing style.
- Share your knowledge.
LinkedIn forums offer a great way to exchange industry knowledge and generate leads even in the photography industry.
Be polite and respectful. Your knowledge will make it easier for people to reach you if you answer more questions.
It’s all about providing valuable information that will help them understand your work.
- Referrals.
LinkedIn’s second lead generation strategy for generating leads is referrals. You will see this everywhere and not just on LinkedIn.
The platform is basically a way of building a large network. It is important to have strong referrals and be connected with the right people.
They could be past clients or current ones that are happy to recommend you to their friends. You can ask them to refer you in person or offer some benefits to encourage them.
- LinkedIn Content Marketing.
If you have already followed the content creation process with the blog, you can also use it on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the most popular platform where blogs and other content formats are posted in order to generate leads.
LinkedIn appears to have a large following that may not be able to access their newsfeeds to sign up for social events. Instead, they browse through articles to find something of interest.
The site prefers text-only posts over videos, graphics, and other media options.
If you’re able to create a compelling blog post that grabs people’s attention in approximately 1,400 words, you can start posting them.
- Advertise.
LinkedIn Ads may not be as sophisticated as Facebook Ads, but they have a lot more demographics and firmographics, which is why you’ve got more chances to get drone photography leads.
Pay Attention to Your Landing Pages
The key to website lead generation is landing pages, as they are where your leads will “land.” It is important to understand how to create landing pages and to follow any optimization suggestions that you find appropriate for this mere reason.
Your goal when designing landing pages is to convert visitors and readers into customers.
This means that each page must be optimized for a better user experience and include conversion-focused elements. These are our top tips to help you reach your goal:
- Visitors won’t want to stay if you don’t change or remove any content, they consider it a distraction.
- Please describe the service you offer and why it is important for your clients, even when it is clear that drone photography is taking photos with one in essence.
- It is important to define clearly what happens to visitors after they click on an element. Will they be taken to another page or converted? Let them know every detail.
- It is crucial to inform them where to click to perform a specific action. This will help avoid unnecessary clicks.
- To avoid boredom, reduce clicks.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Drone Photography Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Drone Photography Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Drone Photography Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.