The term ‘deliverable’ broadly refers to a tangible or intangible end product created from a project. Within the communications and marketing industry, it may refer to one of a wide range of potential project deliverables with a distinct goal and purpose. Some examples of deliverables in communications are:
- The production of a series of landing pages
- A printed brochure
- QR code software and app or landing page
- Social media campaign (or single post)
- Email campaign
- A search engine marketing campaign
- A PDF brochure outlining new products
- A blog
- A download-able file available on a landing page
A deliverable may be required for internal stakeholders or external stakeholders, depending on who the intended audience is for the overall project.
To create a successful communications deliverable, you first need to identify the resources that are required. Not only does this include a spending budget, but also which personnel and what skills may be required.
Ensuring that each team member involved understands their own responsibilities will help the process to run smoothly.
Task Requirements
Once you have decided on the deliverable to be produced, you need to establish how it can be done.
This can be made easier by breaking the project down into individual tasks and clearly defining what each task requires.
Resources
After breaking the project down into individual tasks, it is essential to understand what resources you will need to produce your deliverable. This will vary according to the type of work you are producing but may include the following:
Budget
You may be given a budget to work within, or you may need to estimate your own budget and ask for approval.
Software
Do you need access to certain software packages to product your deliverable?
Images
You may need to search for and find images from databases to use in your work. To do this, you need to ensure you have access.
Others
Each type of communication will have different resource requirements.
People
When considering resources, you need to include what personnel you may require when producing a deliverable. This will depend greatly on what type of communication you are putting together and may include external and/or internal personnel. Both internal and external resources will not be in charge of creating a campaign but may be able to assist with a variety of aspects of the deliverable. See what types if external and internal personnel you may need to liaise with when developing your deliverable.
| External Personnel | Internal Personnel |
|---|---|
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Depending on how large your organisation is, this may include the following:
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Research
When you set out to create a communication, begin with a clear understanding of your goal. When you have clarity around what it is you need to achieve, you are able to pull together the key points of information that you want to include in the piece.
Who is the target person receiving your deliverable? This is important as you may have similar information to share with clients and suppliers, but it may need to be delivered in different manners. If your target audience has already been defined, you are off to a good start.
If it has not, you need to work with your team to put together a clear picture of who you are targeting, why them and the best way to reach them. By understanding your market, you can create a deliverable that is more likely to achieve its goal.
Another important aspect of research is considering the policies and procedures of your organisation. This may include:
- Communication policies
- Branding policies
- Social media or email policies
- Privacy policies
Additionally, research may also encompass using documents, templates or other sources of information for certain types of communications, often provided by the workplace.
Develop Metrics
During your research phase of creating a communication or marketing piece, you would have outlined the clear goals and objectives for the piece of work. It is important to develop some metrics around the work, so that its success can be assessed, and changes made if necessary to future works. These metrics can guide the project and can include deadlines and goals regarding the budget as well as more obvious outcomes.
Some examples of criteria that may be used to assess the success may be:
- Increased sales—Be specific with number or items sold, dollar values or the percentage you want to increase by
- Increased profits
- Increased sign ups
- Increased applications
- Increased enquiries
- Increased traffic to website
- Improved brand awareness—Consider how you would monitor this
- Increased interaction on social media—There are various tracking tools available to measure this
- Reported ease of use (of website or app for example)—Surveys, focus groups or questionnaires may be helpful here
- Was the work delivered on time and on budget?
After producing your deliverable, it is necessary to share it with the relevant personnel before launching it. This may include the same people who were involved in its production in addition to management for final approval.
Each organisation will have its own procedures for sharing communications prior to finalising works. Having a documented review and approval process is helpful so that each team member has a clear understanding of this. The sharing of your draft may occur in one-on-one meetings or possibly in regular team meetings that can discuss a number of works in one session.
Feedback
Taking on feedback can help to transform your work into one that really speaks to its audience. Feedback can come from a number of sources and stakeholders including:
- Within the organisation: As discussed above, sharing your deliverable within your organisation can help to refine it thanks to input from your team members, other departments, and management
- Customers and clients: Sharing your works with a small number of ideal clients via a focus group or surveys and questionnaires can give you valuable feedback, particularly with regards to reaching your target market
- Industry experts: In some circumstances, the feedback of an industry expert may be helpful. For example, before launching an advertising deliverable (including social media), you may need to double-check rules and regulations around certain industries.
In the health industry, for example, there are very strict guidelines with regards to what claims you can make when talking about health devices or products. While asking for feedback on your work is important, putting that feedback into action by incorporating it into your final product is essential.
Watch this YouTube video by Communication Coach Alex Lyon for further information on feedback and how to take note of feedback that is implicit and verbal as well as non-verbal.
Monitoring the Communications Industry
By monitoring the communications industry, your organisation is able to stay abreast of what is being said about them and their brands. Put simply, media or communications monitoring is reading, watching and listening to the news, then identifying and analysing the content that is relevant to you and your organisation.
This allows you to have a comprehensive understanding of your brand perception and allows your organisation to be a part of any conversations if and when they occur.
By knowing what your customers, potential customers, and detractors are saying about you, an organisation can fine-tune its offerings or marketing to be better suited to its intended audience.
Some of the benefits of monitoring the communications industry are:
- Stay up to date with the latest news: Identify top news outlets and reporters, and how to best engage them as well as capture new trends
- Improve customer support: See customer complaints, questions, and comments in online forums (including social media), which allows you to reply or take their comments into consideration
- Collect feedback: Collect invaluable feedback can be collected, particularly on social media platforms
- Engage industry influencers: Keep on top of industry influencers, which can help you to begin conversations with them and tailor your messaging.
There are many methods of monitoring the communications industry. It can be as simple as signing up for industry-specific e-newsletters, setting up Google alerts, or using a paid media managing tool (such as Social Sprout, Hootsuite, or Agility).
Watch the following YouTube video by Brand24 for further explanation of the history of media monitoring.
