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Kaitlin Yount

AMA: LinkedIn Senior Director, Product Marketing, Kaitlin Yount on Stakeholder Management

August 25 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. How does your company define the difference between product marketing and integrated / brand / customer marketing?

    Do you see value in having both roles, e.g. Integrated team works more closely with the creative team on seasonal/holiday/brand campaigns whereas Product Marketing works more closely with the Product team on product launches, user research/insights, positioning strategy, etc. I have found it challenging for Product Marketing to own all of this, and often see different skill sets from marketers who are great at creative brand campaigns vs. PMMs who are skilled at positioning a new product and bringing it to market.

    Kaitlin Yount
    Kaitlin Yount

    LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Marketing, Trust • 5y

    On the Consumer side (where I sit) we have Brand Marketers and Product Marketers. Product Marketers need to deeply understand the value prop, positioning and user needs of the product. A big part of the PMM role is Inbound - leveraging research and insights to influence product strategy. When a PMM has Outbound work they need to do, we work very closely with our Brand counterparts to ensure our campaigns are consistent with the overall Brand message, and don’t conflict in terms of timing and cha ...Read More

    9,389 Views
    3 requests

  2. What approach do you take to build internal consensus among stakeholders when you have limited data to prove/disprove an idea?

    Kaitlin Yount
    Kaitlin Yount

    LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Marketing, Trust • 5y

    First of all, I’m super transparent about the genesis of my idea. In my experience you’ll lose credibility quickly if you aren’t upfront about the fact that you don’t have a ton of data to support an idea you’re passionate about. Hopefully, you do have at least some good reason for your instinct. Have competitors successfully done something similar? Do you have research or user feedback that would tangentially suggest your idea will work? Next, be precious about the problem you’re trying to solv ...Read More

    6,677 Views
    1 request

  3. I'm curious about the experience of others, which group has been harder to work with––Product or Sales? And why and how y'all work through issues?

    Kaitlin Yount
    Kaitlin Yount

    LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Marketing, Trust • 5y

    I’ve been in consumer businesses during my career as a Product Marketing so I can only speak to working with Product. I’ve had a lot of great experiences with Product partners. First and foremost, when starting a new business relationship I find ways to add value before I start offering criticism. Figure out what the team needs that you can help with and start there for at least the first few weeks. Next, make sure you’re picking your battles, and make sure your rationale for picking your battle ...Read More

    2,787 Views
    2 requests

  4. Tips for managing stakeholder input: are there any templates or best practices for when to gather input and how to incorporate (i.e. whose feedback to incorporate vs. ignore, etc.), especially as it relates to a timeline?

    Kaitlin Yount
    Kaitlin Yount

    LinkedIn Senior Director of Product Marketing, Trust • 5y

    Build a RAPID (or choose your decision making framework of preference). Ideally, this isn’t such a problem in your organization that you need a RAPID for everything. But don’t waste time trying to backchannel this and figure out whose opinion really matters - be transparent and ask your manager or stakeholders to partner with you in clarifying this. It is absolutely best practice at any company to be very clear about who the decision maker is (as well as the other roles in the framework) - you w ...Read More

    2,018 Views
    2 requests