How This Tethered Drone Company Built a Digital-First GTM Strategy in the Traditional Defense Sector

Convention says you can’t sell to the defense industry without boots on the ground and years of relationship building. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Guilhem de Marliave revealed how his tethered drone company proved that assumption wrong, using a digital-first approach to achieve 50% growth and deploy over 1,000 systems globally.

Breaking the Defense Industry Playbook

The defense industry has long operated on an unwritten rule: sales happen through relationships, trade shows, and face-to-face meetings. But Guilhem’s team saw an opportunity to do things differently. “We builded all the marketing, the go to market strategy through the web, through internet. Even if at first it sounded a bit counterintuitive, especially in the defense sector, but actually it worked well,” he explains.

Understanding the Long-Tail Opportunity

This unconventional approach wasn’t just about being different – it was driven by clear market analysis. “It’s kind of a long tail problem for us challenge because we are on a niche technology, so we had to export the system. We have a few targets per country, very precise,” Guilhem shares.

This insight shaped their entire go-to-market strategy. Rather than trying to build a massive sales force to cover multiple territories, they focused on creating digital touchpoints that could reach their highly specific target customers wherever they were.

From Digital Presence to Physical Teams

The digital-first strategy proved so successful that it actually facilitated traditional expansion. “With the pool from North America, we bought it a team two years ago. So now we have a team of five people based in North Carolina,” Guilhem notes. The digital foundation made it easier to identify where to invest in physical presence.

Validation Through Major Events

The strategy’s success is perhaps best demonstrated by the high-profile deployments it has enabled. “We have systems on the Super Bowl, for instance, in Atlanta. And this year or so we have been engaged also in the Football World Cup in Qatar on the Rider cup,” Guilhem shares. These weren’t just impressive logos – they were proof points that a digital-first approach could land enterprise-level defense and security contracts.

Market Evolution and Customer Education

The company’s digital presence has evolved alongside market maturity. As Guilhem explains, “Our customers, they know what a tether drone is and they know how to use it and what for. It’s more a question of scaling programs and convincing Erkey and using it in real life situation to scale.”

Key Lessons for B2B Tech Founders

1. Digital-first doesn’t mean digital-only. The company’s success came from using digital channels to identify and nurture opportunities, then building physical presence where it mattered most.
2. Market constraints can be advantages. The niche, targeted nature of their market made a digital approach more effective, not less.
3. High-profile deployments become marketing assets. Each successful implementation at major events built credibility for their digital-first approach.

Looking Forward

The company continues to evolve its digital strategy as it pushes into new frontiers. Their vision of “developing fully autonomous tele drone boxes that can be remotely deployed on sites borders and controlled through kind of a cloud system” shows how digital-first thinking shapes not just their marketing, but their entire product roadmap.

For B2B founders in traditional industries, the lesson is clear: sometimes the most effective go-to-market strategy is the one that breaks with convention. The key is understanding your market deeply enough to know when and how to break the rules.