FlyFreely: Industry Overview, Competitor Analysis, Technology Impact and Customer Engagement Strategy

Industry Overview:
According to Gartner research institute global drone market revenue increases 34% in last year
which is over $6 billion income increase in 2017 ("Gartner Says Almost 3 Million Personal and
Commercial Drones Will Be Shipped in 2017", 2018). In line with the world drone industry
development, Victoria, NSW, Queensland, Tasmania and Western Australia, in Australia shows a
rapid growth of use in drone for their and business purposes. At present, drone uses for multi-
purposes, such as agriculture, 3D, real-state, fun and health and safety ("About Us", 2018). The
industry is showing all the signs of a sector maturing in terms of technology, safety and
sophistication within Australia ("Drone Industry up Date April 2018", 2018). Main boost of the
industry are backed up by latest three technological development linked to drones, 1) user-friendly
autopilot and tracking systems, 2) improve capacity of lithium-polymer batteries and 3) compact
digital cameras (Chabot, 2018). Therefore, adaptation of technologically advanced drones, become a
key factor of business’s competitive advantage (Guo & Herrmann-Pillath, 2017).
The current use of drone in the world wide now trending towards commercial and private use
purposes, which has grown exponentially in last few years, apart from traditional drone use of
military and recreational domains (Lee & Choi, 2016). The market trend mainly occurred due to the
development and integration of IT and safelight technology use, which directly support investigation
of agricultural crops to disaster damage, traffic control to security monitoring and weather
observation to broadcasting. Furthermore, with the involvement of Amazon, Google and Facebook
drone become a method of logistics (Lee & Choi, 2016). Moreover, drones facilitating wireless
broadcast or point-to-multipoint transmission with 5G/ beyond 5G (B5G) for cellular architectures as
well (Sekander, Tabassum & Hossain, 2018).
In contrary to drones’ rapid development, individual privacy and national security become
vulnerable as well. As a result now countries are in trend of putting more lows into drone
operations. Some of those examples are, geo-fencing system, self- authorization option, Know
before You Fly, No-Drone Zone, Drone Defender and many other government anti-drone technology
programmes (Brown, Korza, Donahue, Parnas & Borowski, 2016). Further Luppicini and So (2016),
suggested that there is need of to understand the possible negative and unknown consequences
especially related to ethical use of commercial drones
Countries like Australia which has a large mining industry can widely use drone for topographical
survey, safety investigation, and other works (Lee & Choi, 2016). According to Hand (2018),
Australia’s mining sector expect a rapid boost in coming years mainly shaped by the digital
disruption of automation, drones and big data. Among those he estimate drones impact to the
industry would be 16%, which is basically collect safe data to map, survey and explore mines in
Australia. Further to the Clothier, Greer, Greer and Mehta (2015), research about Australians’
opinions about drone technology and it use, find out that Australian not much concern about safety
and rick of the drone, but they mostly warred about, their lack of technical knowledge and new
terminology issues about drone. Therefore, they expect to fill their knowledge vacuum exposing into
more and more media awareness.
FlyFreely is a Townsville base drone management service offering business, founded by David Cole.
Their primary vision is to provide direct services to industries. Further, to become unique in the
industry they set their value propositions as integrated drone management solution provider in NQ
Townsville. Hence their company become all-in-one place Service Company providing training,
regulatory compliance, fleet management and operation management - aircraft assessment,
mission, data, approvals and selling ("FlyFreely Home", 2018). Their existing strategy already
attracted many companies including, mining, agriculture, and research sector such as, CSIRO,
WATPAC and James Cook University ("World-first integrated drone management platform set for
take-off", 2018). FlyFreely also introduce three steps customer service operation, 1) Pilot training
and licensing, 2) Craft assessment and registration and 3) Mission planning and approval. Further to
improve their customer base and it set up review and customer communication strategy, FlyFreely

now decide to invest on social media marketing ("Certified RPAS Training | Remotely Piloted Aircraft
& Unmanned Aerial Systems", 2018)
Competitor Analysis
In terms of competitors of the FlyFreely Company, even though they are Start-up Company, they get
the competitor advantage of be the first in the region to provide all-in-one drone solution. Drone
service providers of the industry mainly relater either of following category, 1) operation system, 2)
drone aggregator sites, 3) full service and 4) unmanned traffic management providers. Expect the
full service providers all others focusing only on one sector of the industry. Some of them are drone
hiring and operating only, some are software and data analysis service providers, and some of them
are only focus in one area of drone management such as traffic management. Among those Measure
and Airobotics company services comparatively similar to Fly Freely business model as their direct
competitors.
In comparing their social media and customer engagement strategy, it is observe that all three
companies are not well place their strategies to enhance their customer engagement through social
media. Website still serve as their best platform to share information with customers. Further, for
the feedbacks and engagement they provide only small priority for social media links in page, which
is limited to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Linked In. Only in the Ai Robotics Drones have
Instagram media. In terms of the social presence or social currency Ai Robotics Drones have the best
in compare with Fly Freely and Measure Australia drone companies.
In terms of statistics it has been use www.alexa.com, www.seoptimes.com, and www.likealyzer.com
free service websites direct page search. For the website, Ai Robotics Drones has 6 visitors, where
their web page pose are followed by 4,667 twitter and more than two hundred thousand you tube
viewers. However, Measure and Fly Freely has less than 2 person per day visit their web sites. In
compare with Measure Company, Fly Freely still has good customer engagement. According to
Likealyzer Facebook analyser, both Measure and Fly Freely haven’t have good enough customer
engagement, which is less than 30%. However, Ai Robotics Drones has 2,090 followers in their page.
As a B to B service providers all three companies use Linked quite wisely in compare other social
media channels. Ai Robotic Drones 5,459 followers, Measure 287 followers and Fly Freely 189
followers for Linked in. Ai Robotics Drones frequent twitting in compare other companies. It is 1,882
tweets (Measure – 57, Fly Freely – 59). They also have 4,584 followers (7 for Measures, 71 for Fly
Freely). All three companies use social media for brand awareness and deepening customer
engagement. However, it seems that customer experience are not much encourage among the post.
Further, Fly Freely social media analysis explain marketing strategy.

Effect of Technology on Fly Freely
Fly Freely is a services platform that enables efficient operation of the drone flights of the
enterprises. Fly Freely co-ordinates the training, aircraft and remote pilot authorisation within one
place (Flyfreely.io., 2018). The company helps in the navigation of the complex barriers that make
the process of drone operations simple. Drone acts as an essential component of air power within
Australia. The armed forces in Australia have drones that gave birth to the concept of consumer
drones in Australia. The emergence of technology like radio-controlled aircraft along with
smartphone paved the path for the emergence of the drone industry in Australia. Australia has
superior technology regarding electric motors along with a lithium-polymer battery that significantly
serves the cause of the company, Fly Freely (Floreano & Wood, 2015). Australia has microcontroller
chips of supreme quality that helps in the aspect of squeezing small computer within a box that
paved the path for developing open-source autopilot.
Microcontrollers helped in providing onboard brain that helps in the innovative designing of the
drones of Fly Freely in Australia. Researchers in Australia have found out how the drones having
vertical axis rotor can be beneficial for the enterprises. The organisations in Australia are benefitted
by Fly Freely as they can get real-time information about the pilots along with operations (Mahajan
& Raj, 2017). Many commercial organisations in Australia makes use of the drones, and this can help
in maximising profit for Fly Freely. The integrated training program of RePL of Fly Freely helps the
companies in Australia. Many people in Australia want a Remote Pilot License and Fly Freely
dramatically works to their advantage. There are engineers in Australia who want to get practical
experience about aircraft and Fly Freely helps in serving their purpose. There are people in Australia
want to become professional drone pilots and Fly Freely helps them in reaching
their goals. Fly Freely is useful in supporting the model crafts and custom crafts can also be added
that dramatically works for the benefit of many commercial organisations in Australia (Wright,
2015).
Price of the accelerometers which base on the micro-electromechanical system has come down in
the recent days in Australia that has led to the emergence of companies like Fly Freely (Azari et al.,
2018). The availability of tilt sensors that are found within the smartphones in Australia has helped
in the growing popularity of Fly Freely. The emergence of sectors like Photography along with Real
Estate necessitates the using of the drone service in Australia. Fly Freely helps the companies in
Australia in the proper utilisation of the drones for various commercial purposes. Technology is a
favourite arena of the study of a large number of students in Australia, and the hobbyist drone user
can know more about the craft of droning with the help of the efforts of the company, Fly Freely.
They register with the company so that they can fulfil the recreational purpose. Innovations are
being made about media coverage along with filmmaking, and it increases the prospects of
companies like Fly Freely. There are rules about commercial drone usage and Fly Freely helps the
companies in the aspect of clarifying legal landscape about drone usage (Hartz, 2017). Industrial
applications about UAV technology has risen in the recent age that has made Fly Freely significant in
the environment of Australia.
There are many companies in Australia that make use of drones in the video for serving the
marketing purpose. Fly Freely can offer help to these companies by making them proficient in the
area of using the drone technology. Drones act as a multipurpose tool within Australia that will
become popular in the coming days. Training along with education will be needed for people flying
in the airspace and Fly Freely can serve this purpose. The agriculture sector in Australia needs the
drones that can help in the aspect of studying the farmland along with the irrigation system (Rao,
Gopi & Maione, 2016). The projects are
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often time-consuming, and the using of drones can act to the advantage of the farmers within
Australia. Sensor capturing data is exceedingly favored in Australia that can help in the extrapolation
of useful information. Fly Freely provides training materials that can help people in becoming
proficient in the usage of drone technology. The construction firms in Australia needs the drones
that can help them in creating the aerial shots within which architectural rendering can be placed.
The technology of drone can help the construction companies in the creation of final designs.
Customer Engagement Strategy
Since Flyfreely is a startup company, it needs to concentrate its marketing efforts online. There are
several key areas where Flyfreely can take an advantage of its competitors in the digital space1.
Therefore, it is essential for Flyfreely to own an online presence to cover the needs for the target
market. Using online marketing, which refer to advertise through online channels (websites, social
media, search engines, mobile apps, ... etc), is a requirement for a startup company. When Flyfreely
increases its online visibility, it enhances the opportunities to acquire new leads and spread
awareness of the brand that leads to helpfulness in the market2.
In general, marketing is consisting of three components that are creating a value to the end user,
communicating to describe the value from/to the end users, and delivering a value to the end user3.
Using social media in marketing is a vital component for FlyFreely, which helps to create a new brand
style, link the brand to audience, increase the engagement on social media, optimise content to be
easily discovered, invest in low paid e-marketing campaigns, create engagement with involvements,
apply a comprehensive customer relationship management strategy, and maximise endorsements4.
Website
Since Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for FlyFreely, they put good efforts in it. However,
website needs to include XML sitemap in order to allow search engine to crawl the webpages, after
checking the robots.txt file for flyfreely.io but couldn’t find an XML sitemap. Specifying XML sitemaps
into the robots.txt file will ensure that the search engines and other crawlers find it easily on website
each time they access the website. They should Make sure to include pages you want search engines
to crawl into5.
The other thing about the website is the speed on mobiles phones, the website lacks the speed
because they lack the following optimizing images, Enabling compression, minifying HTML, Leverage
browser caching. The framework for the mobile is not present. They should follow a structured data.
The traffic is very low on the website which is something not good for the business or a website6
For usability they done well in many aspects such as – clean and short URL, available favicon and
declared language. However, there is no available structured data markup in order to generate rich
snippets outcomes. Rich snippets allows the website owners for sending organized data to search
engine robots. They allow search engines to understand the content and generate a well-organised
search result7.
Facebook
Unfortunately, there is no enough activity on FlyFreely Facebook page, which effects directly on
customer’s engagement. The page was created on 21 September 2016 so there are above 45 post
Until, now there are only 88 likes and 92 followers and only 1 review8.
In order to increase Facebook engagement, it needs to be more active on Facebook. They could first
create and share valuable post, which are helpful and actionable, specific and tangible for the
audience. Second, they could use appealing visuals images or graphics in order to get double
engagement rate than using the text. Third, they could ask the audience simple questions, about the
brand, events or a daily activity in order to directly boost the engagement9.