Drone Marketing: Everything You Need to Know [in 2025]

For the last few decades, drone technology has improved a lot and it made drones inexpensive, accessible, and customizable.

Now they are finding applications in various industries other than for military purposes.

Some of the new-found applications include farming, wildlife monitoring, disaster management, law enforcement, package delivery, and so on.

Marketers and business owners have started realizing the potential of using drones in their digital marketing plan.  

You can use drones to enhance or supplement your digital marketing campaign.

The outcome of your drone-based marketing campaign (if implemented properly) can leave an impactful and awe-inspiring impression on your target audience.

5 Ways Drone Based Marketing Work for Your Business  

Here’s how you can leverage drone based marketing to build brand awareness for your product/service, or your business.

1. Capturing (or Generating) Visually Stunning Content

Drones can help you generate visually stunning content (both photos and videos) that traditional videography and photography methods can’t able to achieve.

The camera technology used in many high-end drones like DJI Mini Pro 3, DJI Mavic 3, and Autel EVO II possess better video and image resolutions, improved stabilization systems that are powered by on-board gimbals.

This powered gimbal will make sure the shooting is stabilized as it can counteract the bumps and jolts that come with drone flight.

Also, intelligent flight controls made these drones easy to handle even for a newbie.

Drone shots are very unique and stick out from traditional visuals, and they tend to grab your audience’s attention and hold it for longer.

Whether it be a music concert, sporting event, or a real estate property, viewing it from a birds-eye view can gives you a perspective that is both visually appealing and informative.

You can incorporate these drone-shot videos and images in your preferred digital marketing channels to capture the heart and mind of your target audience.

2. Your Business Website

For your target audience, your business website can help them raise brand awareness, provide valuable information, contact your business as lead prospects, and they will also provide you with referrals.

To fulfill any of these goals, you need to provide an awesome user experience for your website visitors.

When designing your website, you can insert external shots (preferably video) of your business to make a great homepage.

You can check out Bluehost, Namecheap, Inmotion Hosting, Pixpa, and Hostinger that will help in building a website at an affordable cost (that include domain name and web hosting).

For example, you can create a homepage carousel that is visually rich with drone images or videos.

You can add depth to relevant pages on your website.

You can drone visuals to tell your origin story in the ‘About Us’ page section.

You can showcase the exteriors and interiors of your business (large office building or manufacturing unit).

For example, here’s how an aerial filming and drone photography service provider Bad Wolf Horizon did a virtual office tour fly-through for a rental office space.

Here’s another example how Tesla did a flythrough video for their EV manufacturing facility in Berlin.

You can incorporate (relevant) drone images and videos in your blogs, company news, and events-related articles.

You can also add drone images in downloadable materials like company brochures, whitepapers, ebooks and even as branded wallpapers.

3. Drone Based Advertising (Banners and Light Shows)

Not only you can capture visually-stunning footage using drones, you can use them to display banners to areas where your audience has gathered (sporting event, music concert, near a high-rise building, expos, or inside a big shopping mall).

This kind of advertising is majorly done for raising awareness regarding new product launches, soon-to-be released movies and web series.

For example, Oreo did a brand awareness campaign using Oreo cookie-shaped drones in an innovative in-mall display, at Westfield Shopping Centre in London.

Like Oreo’s campaign, there are different ways you can showcase your brand message using drones.

Here’s another example of a drone-based display banner.

Second type of drone-based advertising is the drone light show. This is the most popular brand promotion strategy adopted by many big brands.

For this purpose, marketers use quadcopter drones with light fixatures that are controlled by programmable remote-control platform.

Here’s how automobile manufacturer Kia used small quadcopter drones to unveil their new brand logo.

Samsung did a similar drone-based advertising campaign to promote it’s Galaxy Book series of laptops, by collaborating with Intel.

These are some of the innovative ways to spread your brand message out in the open.

People will engage with your drone advertising campaign by recording the event and taking photos.

And there they will share the footage and photos on their personal social media accounts, and messaging apps. In that way, your brand message gets amplified via digital channels.

4. Social Media

Sharing drone photos and videos (along with great captions) on your social media pages can create a positive first impression about your business.

For example, you can convert aerial shots of your office building, real estate properties, outdoor events, etc. into carousel-style posts on Instagram and Linkedin.

You can start conversations on Twitter by sharing a (funny) question along with a drone video or photo.

According to Hootsuite’s Global State of Digital 2022 report, 24.8% survey respondents say that they interact with a brand online after watching a video made by that brand.

Also, with smartphones and mobile internet now available at highly affordable prices, people are starting to consume more online video content.

Due to these reasons, video sharing platforms like TikTok and Youtube have been surge in daily usage and this forced other social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin) to push out more video-based content on their respective platforms.

You can leverage video-supported social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Youtube Shorts to push out video content made from your drone footage.

Whether you are on Twitter, Linkedin, or Instagram, you can leverage drone-related hashtags and find those hashtags that have big following and high user engagement.

You can later add these hashtags on your social media posts. Thereby, your posts get wider audience reach and your profile get more new visitors.

When you run drone-based ad campaigns on shopping malls or event locations, people tend to record that campaign and share it on their social media pages.

You can track those posts via hashtags (or brand hashtags, if they are familiar with your brand) and location tags.

You can engage with those posts via reshares or commenting under those posts. This will make people reach out your brand to know more about you.

5. YouTube

You cannot ignore YouTube as it not just a video sharing platform but also the second largest search engine in the world after Google.

Instead of uploading raw drone footage, you can use them to create explainer videos and then upload to your Youtube channel.

For creating explainer videos, marketers can use online video making tools like Renderforest, InVideo, Biteable, Canva, and Animoto. These tools are very user-friendly and create videos from readily available templates or from the scratch.

These videos can grab the attention of your target audience and makes your message heard.

Explainer videos have high chances of being shared across social media platforms and messaging apps.

You can also share behind-the-scene footage of your drone advertising campaigns on your channel.

For example, Intel shared their behind-the-scenes video on how executed their drone light show using 500 drones to break their previous record.

Do you know that Youtube supports 180-degree and 360-degree spherical videos?

You can create 180 or 360-degree videos that can be viewed through a VR headset, to provide your target audience an immersive experience.

Here’s an example of 360-degree spherical video (taken from a drone) looks like.

For recording spherical videos, you can use cameras like Insta 360 ONE,  GoPro MAX 360, and Mi Sphere Camera.

If you want to build a solid brand presence using YouTube in an organic way then check out this article.

7 Industries Suitable for Drone Based Marketing

You can consider drone marketing if your business comes under anyone of the following six industries.

1. Real Estate

Whether you are in residential or commercial real estate business, you can showcase your properties to potential buyers and renters using drone marketing.

You can provide them a “virtual visit” like experience by displaying exteriors and interiors of your properties, on your website and social media pages.

Also, you can use drone visuals along with photos and videos taken from a regular camera angle, to create a meaningful impression on your potential customers.

2. Manufacturing

As mentioned earlier in this post (as an example), manufacturing facilities can leverage drone marketing to build awareness and attract potential clients to their business.

3. Landscaping

If you are in the landscaping business, you can showcase your previous works on your website and social media pages.

Make sure drone footage is taken from all angles of the property and that cover a wide area.

You can increase the chances of sales conversions through your drone marketing campaign by incorporating your best landscaping works.

4. Construction

Showcasing aerial and interior drone footage of your past construction projects can help in increasing the confidence of your client prospects to approach your business.

Also, you can create impressive time-lapse videos of your construction project from start to finish.

Then, push out these videos on your website, your Facebook page, and your other social media pages.

5. Event Planning/Event Management

Whether it be conducting a music concert, film awards show in an open stadium, high profile wedding, or a corporate event, so much work goes on behind the scenes of an event.

With the help of drone marketing, you can display work portfolio to your potential clients in a better way.

You can shoot your events from an aerial angle to give your target audience an idea of all the resources you utilize, like the team involved, lighting, set pieces, and other accessories.

Add drone images and videos of past events you’ve managed, on your website. You can also provide your best works from unique angles.

6. Academic Institutions

Since most students never even visit a school, college, or university campus before attending, it is important to have the most current and attractive photos of your institution displayed on your digital channels and in your marketing materials.

Making your university/college/school appear welcoming, visually appealing, and spacious, are important aspects to consider when incorporating drones into marketing plan.

7. Travel and Tourism

Travel and Tourism is another sector where business owners can leverage drone marketing to the maximum.

If you are running a travel agency or homestay business, you can use drones to take aerial shots of travel activities like boat rides, trekking, jungle rides, skiing, and many more.

You can also take photos and videos of popular tourist hotspots in your locality.

Footage take from different angles can give an awesome visual experience for your target audience who loves traveling.

You can include all the drone photos and videos in all sections on your website like gallery, blogs, reviews, and testimonials.

Also, leverage your social media platforms (especially Instagram) to attract travel lovers to your brand through drone-made visuals.

You can take ‘drone video selfies’ of your clients and request them to share their experience with your business on their personal social media accounts.

You can use the same drone based marketing strategy when you running a hospitality business like beach/lakeside/hill resort, hotel, or homestay.

Final Thoughts

Hope this blog post gave you better insights on how to leverage drone marketing in your brand awareness campaigns.

Please make sure that you follow rules and regulations of the territory you are currently residing, while using drones especially in public spaces.

Also, running a drone-based marketing/adverting campaign is not cheap so you need to calculate your expectations before allocating your budget for it.

What you do think? Let me your thoughts on drone marketing in the comments.