What I Pack in the Botanical and Outdoor Creative Marketing Bag

Your line of work relies on communication, knowledge, and persuasion. So you need someone in botanical and outdoor creative marketing who puts the three together.

1. You need someone who understands communication.

Before freelancing, I contributed to my agricultural college. I designed layouts, took photos, and wrote articles. Later, I wrote press releases for the research side of university public relations. And I created promotions and edited for a university nonfiction journal.

The greatest challenge was creating a grant proposal package for a food nonprofit. It had to be a technical yet persuasive composition. I made it easy to read through with conversational copy and a simplified layout design.

2. You need someone who understands the technical side.

To study plants, I took to the field, photo-documented, and followed up with lab work and reports. I surveyed and wrote about woodcock nesting sites and plant diversity. I researched and wrote a thesis on invasive horsenettle in livestock fields. At a forestry lab, I surveyed bark beetles infesting Southern pine forests.

I integrated gardening and house plant care into my work and personal life. Adding botanical illustration as a hobby forced me to research and rehearse botany.

3. You need someone who understands human desires and how to sate them—the persuasion side.

Communication and technical skills come together to make something more. They form empathy for providers and consumers. And the strategy helps them achieve their needs. From the creative side, it’s not about being clever with your design, photography, or writing. It’s about studying the market and supporting the end goal with your creative tools.

I know this from my courses and events with the American Writers & Artists Institute. I’m always learning more from them. And they’re prominent educators in creative marketing, including direct response.

About Services and Benefits of the Botany and Outdoor Creative Marketing Bag

Creating writing-centric media is like hiking with one of those massive overnight backpacks. Sure, it’s just a backpack. But unless you train with it, it slows you down. And if you don’t organize or pack well, you can get frustrated or stranded.

The creative marketing journey needs tools for design, photography, and writing. It needs a mind trained to use the right tool at the right time.

Few prepare for such a journey. I do.

Creative Marketing is the overview journey for the reader:

  • First sight—welcomes rather than intimidates readers
  • Curiosity—prompts further action
  • Regard—clear information evokes trust
  • Style—creates memorable branding and messaging
  • Tour guide—leads the reader between each important point

Graphic Design is the first and sometimes only layer of a message most people see:

  • It’s the welcoming committee dressed right for the occasion
  • Visual appeal often sells itself—audiences are loyal to aesthetics
  • Design facilitates the great value of photography and writing

Photography is an important visual asset that speaks for itself:

  • Nothing beats seeing the actual product or location of a subject
  • Custom photography is authentic, whereas stock can look generic
  • You need it everywhere: brochures, blogs, e-commerce pages…

Copywriting is the core message that other marketing revolves around:

  • People come for visuals, but an audience stays for the words
  • Writing targets key emotions and supports those motivations with rationale
  • Edits improve understanding with clarity and confidence

That’s why I think about the complete picture and pack these tools in one bag.

My Botanical and Outdoor Creative Marketing Approach: Persuasion is Psychology

Good design, photography, and writing create and nurture relationships. Those relationships may be with peers who trust you. But they may be with clients who want to buy something but need assurance.

You want knowledge and empathy to build trust. In time, this trust builds relationships and leads to action. Then action solves problems and brings people even closer together.

I keep this in mind in my botanical and outdoor creative marketing.

Get in touch.

A Side Pocket of Something Personal

  • I’m thorough and patient.
  • I take deadlines seriously.
  • I create tomato soup from scratch—as in its straight from a garden I seeded.