Making the right choice when it comes to your marketing technology is a daunting task, especially if you’re moving away from the familiarity of an existing platform in order to scale your marketing operations.
On a personal level, the right decision could lead to career progression and promotion, professionally, you’re setting the business up for future success. But make the wrong decision, and you could end up doubling your costs when you need to migrate again in a year's time.
But when it comes to making that all important decision, there’s yet another layer to consider when building your marketing technology spine. Do you opt for a traditional Marketing Automation platform, or make the move to the Marketing Cloud?
Ultimately, the decision depends on who you’re trying to engage and what your marketing and sales process looks like.
If your goal is to nurture leads to a qualification point with a clear handover to Sales, then Pardot is perhaps the best solution for you. Alternatively, if you’re looking for 1-1 consumer engagement with an emphasis on social media and advertising, then Marketing Cloud may be your best bet.
To help guide you in the right direction, let’s look at each solution in more detail.
Pardot: The solution for SME and mid-size businesses looking for advanced automation options, typically used for B2B lead generation and management.
What is it?
Pardot is the leading B2B marketing automation platform from Salesforce and part of the Sales Cloud. It’s typically used for lead generation, nurture and drip email campaigns via its Engagement Studio.
Engagement studio allows you to send targeted emails based on real-time customer behaviours, providing a personalized experience for each prospect. Within that, lead scoring and grading allows you to create robust profiles of potential clients and pass across the highest quality leads to your sales team.
Strengths
- Being native to Salesforce, it provides deep integration with Salesforce CRM
- Pardot is incredibly easy to navigate compared to other Marketing Automation platforms
- Lead qualification is flexible using grading, scoring, and any other criteria.
Where can I find out more?
Head directly to pardot.com or get in touch if you’d like an impartial expert opinion on which Marketing Automation platform would best suit your business.
Marketing Cloud: For large and enterprise businesses, typically a mix of B2B and B2C and looking to engage heavily across social and advertising channels.
What is it?
Marketing Cloud sits separate from the Salesforce Sales Cloud and encompasses several component modules including Email Studio, Social Studio, Advertising Studio…you get the idea.Simply put, it’s a unified marketing platform that drives 1-1 multi-channel consumer engagement. It aims to integrate every touchpoint and experience with your brand across advertising, marketing, commerce, sales etc.
Strengths
- Sophisticated data management and complex segmentation options
- True multi-channel / omni-channel activity meaning a fully closed reporting loop (including mobile)
- Incredibly flexible and scalable – if you have the skills to manage it.
Where can I find out more?
Head directly to salesforce.com or get in touch if you’d like to understand whether Salesforce Marketing Cloud is right for your business.
When it comes to making the right decision with your marketing technology, leave the stressful decisions to the experts. Operating independent of the vendors, CleverTouch Consulting have helped over 400 businesses choose the right marketing technology for them.
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