Executive Summary
Your executive summary is the first part of your business plan, but you usually write it last because it is a summary of all the important parts.
The point of your executive summary is to get the reader’s attention quickly. Tell them what kind of drone business you run and how things are going. For example, are you a startup, do you have a drone business that you’d like to grow, or do you run a chain of drone businesses?
Next, give an overview of each part of your plan that follows.
- Briefly describe the drone industry.
- Talk about what kind of drone business you run.
- Detail your direct competitors. Tell us about your ideal customers.
- Give a quick summary of your marketing plan. Find the important people on your team.
- Give an overview of how you plan to handle your money.
Company Overview
In your business summary, you’ll explain what kind of drone business you run.
For instance, you could focus on one of the following kinds of drone businesses:
- Drone photography: Services that do this make high-resolution pictures of nature, beautiful places, and hard-to-reach places.
- Drone videography for real estate: Real estate photography taken from a drone is used to show how valuable a high-end home and its grounds are.
- Drone security: Businesses and people who own their own homes use drone security as an extra measure of safety, especially if they have a lot of land.
- Drone building inspections: Specialized building projects, like ones that are underwater, high towers, or in hard-to-reach places, need drone coverage to inspect and certify work.
In the company overview, you need to say what kind of drone business you will run and give some background information about the business.
Include answers to things like:
- When did you start your business, and why?
- What important steps have you taken so far? Milestones could be the number of high-end homes you serve, the number of clients you have contracts with, or the number of places you serve.
- Your business’s legal structure. Are you set up as an S-Corporation? An LLC? A single-person business? Tell us about your legal structure.
Industry Analysis
You need to give an overview of the drone industry in your industry or market analysis.
This may seem pointless, but it has more than one use.
First, learning about the drone industry makes you smarter. It gives you a better idea of the market you’re in.
Second, market research can help you make a better marketing plan, especially if you look for market trends.
The third reason is to show that you know what you’re talking about. This is what you do by doing the research and putting it in your plan.
In the market analysis part of your drone business plan, you should answer the following questions:
- How much money does the drone business make?
- Is the market getting smaller or bigger?
- Who are your biggest rivals in the market?
- Who are the most important market suppliers?
- What changes are happening in the business world?
- How do you think the industry will grow in the next 5–10 years?
- What is the right size of the market? That is, how big is the market that your drone business could serve? You can figure out such a number by figuring out how big the market is in the whole country and then applying that number to the people in your area.
Customer Analysis
In the section of your drone business plan called “Customer Analysis,” you should describe the customers you serve or hope to serve.
Individuals, families, and businesses are all examples of customer segments.
As you might guess, the type of drone business you run will depend a lot on the customer segment(s) you choose. People would respond differently to marketing campaigns than, say, corporations.
Try to figure out who your ideal customers are based on how they look and how they think. In terms of demographics, you should talk about the ages, genders, locations, and levels of income of the people you want to serve.
Psychographic profiles explain what your target customers want and need. The better you can understand and define these needs, the easier it will be to find and keep customers. Before writing your plan, it would be best to talk to a few of your target customers to better understand their needs.
Competitive Analysis
In your competitive analysis, you should list your business’s direct and indirect competitors and then focus on the direct ones.
Other businesses that sell drones are their main rivals.
Indirect competitors are other things that customers can buy besides your product or service that aren’t in direct competition with it. This includes realtors, building inspectors, and photographers for weddings. You also need to talk about direct competition.
Give an overview of each direct competitor’s business and list their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you’ve worked at one of your competitors’ companies, you won’t know everything about them. But you should be able to find out important facts about them, like
- What kind of clients do they work with?
- What kind of business do they have with drones?
- How much do they charge (high, low, etc.)?
- What can they do well?
- What do they do wrong?
For the last two questions, try to answer them from the customers’ point of view. And don’t be afraid to ask the customers of your competitors what they like and dislike about them.
The last part of your competitive analysis section is to list the ways you are better than your competitors. As an example:
- Will you make online videos that fit my needs?
- Will you offer security drone protection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week that your competitors don’t?
- Will you treat your customers better?
- Will you price things better?
Think about how you will do better than your competitors and write them down in this part of your plan.
Marketing Plan
Usually, a marketing plan has four parts: the product, the price, the place, and the promotion. Your marketing plan for a drone business plan should include the following:
Product: In the product section, you should repeat the type of drone company you talked about in the overview of your company. Then, explain what products or services you will be selling. For example, do you make videos of large areas for people who own farms and ranches? Will you offer drone inspection services in hard-to-reach places? Will you give rewards to customers who bring you other customers?
Price: Write down the prices you’ll be charging and how they compare to those of your competitors. In your plan, the product and price sections are basically where you list the services you offer and how much they cost.
Place is where your drone business is located. Write down where your business is located. Find out how far you can travel (the whole county? the whole state?) for drone video or photography projects. For instance, can you take pictures on the roof of a tall building? Will you give a big property owner security 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Talk about how your services might be the best way to meet your customers’ needs.
Promotions: The last part of your drone marketing plan is where you will write down how you will bring potential customers to your location (s). Here are some ways you could promote your business:
- Advertise in the local newspapers, radio stations, and/or magazines
- Get in touch with websites
- Put out flyers
- Email marketing is a good idea.
- Place ads on social media sites
- Improve your website’s SEO (search engine optimization) for specific keywords
Operations Plan
In the other parts of your business plan, you talked about your goals. In your operations plan, you talk about how you will reach those goals. Your plan for operations should have two separate parts.
Everyday short-term processes include everything you do to run your drone business, like answering calls, planning and providing drone services, invoicing and paying bills, etc.
Long-term goals are the goals you want to reach in the future. These could include the dates when you hope to book your Xth client or earn $X. It could also be when you hope to get a long-term contract to provide drone services to the state government.
Management Team
To show that your drone business has a chance to be successful, you need a strong management team. Showcase the backgrounds of your key players, focusing on the skills and experiences that prove they can help a company grow.
The best case scenario is that you and/or your team have direct experience running drone businesses. If so, talk about your experience and skills. But also highlight any experience you think will help your business succeed.
If your team is missing something, you might want to put together an advisory board. A two-to-eight-person advisory board would help your business by giving advice. They would help answer questions and give advice on how to plan. If you need to, try to find advisory board members who have run a drone business or a photography or videography business successfully.
Financial Plan
Your 5-year financial plan should include a monthly or quarterly breakdown for the first year, then an annual breakdown after that. Your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement are all parts of your financial statements.
Income Statement
A more common name for an income statement is a Profit and Loss statement, or P&L. It shows your income and then takes away your expenses to show if you made a profit.
You need to make assumptions in order to make your income statement. For example, will you get at least two requests for drone services every day, or will you expand your drone business to new places? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% every year? As you might expect, the financial forecasts for your business will be greatly affected by the assumptions you choose. Do as much research as you can to try to make sure your assumptions are true.
The Balance Sheets
Balance sheets list what you own and what you owe. Balance sheets can have a lot of information, but try to boil them down to the most important parts. For example, if you put $50,000 into building up your drone business, you won’t make money right away. Instead, it is an asset that you can use to make money for years to come. Also, if someone gives you a check for $50,000, you don’t have to pay it back right away. Instead, you will have to pay that back over time.
Statement of Cash Flow
Your cash flow statement will help you figure out how much money you need to start or grow your business and make sure you never run out of cash. Most business owners and entrepreneurs don’t realize that you can make money but still go bankrupt if you run out of money.
When making your Income Statement and Balance Sheet, make sure to include some of the most important costs of starting or growing a drone business:
- Cost of drone equipment, drone maintenance and office supplies
- Payroll or wages given to employees Business insurance
- Taxes
- If you’re starting a new business, you’ll also have to pay for legal fees, permits, computer software, and equipment.