Saving time and money, and boosting operational efficiency is high priority for most businesses today, therefore it's crucial to find the right platform for your business needs. To make the best decision possible, you must first understand the basics of what a marketing automation platform is and how it can benefit your company.
What is a marketing automation platform?
• Lead nurturing
• Lead-to-customer tracking & reporting
• Serve as a customer marketing database
• Segmentation and hyper-personalisation
...and more.
The MA platform you choose should not only meet your marketing requirements today, but should take into consideration your future business needs.
Below are some common questions, that if you relate to, might make you a good candidate for a marketing automation system:
- Do you spend a lot of time and resources on manual data transfer?
- Do you spend a lot of time and resources on manual data management?
- Do you have many different data sources in various systems that aren't being used?
- Do you spend a lot of time on manual marketing processes, such as email creation, segmentation, and audience building?
- Is it difficult for you to know which marketing processes actually provide a return on investment (ROI)?
Companies usually have four considerations when choosing a marketing automation platform:
- Complexity
- Customisation options
- Integration capabilities
- Budget
Marketo
Recommended for companies with 200+ employees. Marketo is a powerful systems with more advanced, complex setups. It's biggest strength is that there are very few things it can't solve.
Marketo is one of the most flexible and customisable MA systems on the market, built from the ground up to be adaptable to an organisation’s needs. Since Marketo is not a CRM but instead focuses entirely on being a data platform and MA tool, it can concentrate fully on customisation and flexibility. You can achieve highly adapted lead nurturing workflows, lead scoring models, and much more to meet the demands of today's customer journeys.
Marketo is among the more complex systems for initial setup. Because the system is so adaptable and flexible, a lot of thought and technical knowledge is required to set it up correctly from the beginning. Once it is properly set up, the system becomes very logical - and with a little training, easy to use in daily work.
Marketo’s flexible setup environment and data structure makes it a good sender and receiver of data from other systems. Some integrations are already pre-built and easy to set up, while others require integration platforms like SyncCloud . Even if pre-built integrations are missing, it is rare that any one system cannot be integrated with Marketo.
Marketo is primarily aimed at larger organisations with complex data and customisation needs. Therefore, a higher initial cost with licenses and certified Marketo consultants is often recommended when setting it up.
HubSpot
Good for small (1-50 employees) to large (50+ employees) companies. With a user-friendly interface, HubSpot has a fairly quick onboarding process. It's key advantage is that its marketing automation features can be combined with its CMS and CRM features, thus covering many of your organisation’s system needs in one platform.
HubSpot comes equipped with many features that are easy to set up and scale. A big plus is that it is a marketing automation and CRM system in one. The reason HubSpot does not receive a full score here is that there are some features that limit full flexibility; these limitations usually do not exist in systems like Marketo. You will often find features like lead scoring and lead nurturing setups to support more simplified processes.
HubSpot is easy to set up, offers a lot of scalability due to its CRM and marketing automation in one, and has many resources on how different parts of the system work. The time to get a functional and effective HubSpot instance up and running is shorter than most other systems, and it has a very user-friendly interface for almost all functions.
HubSpot has its own portal filled with pre-built integrations. These are often quite limited but work for relatively simple setups. If you want to go deeper, you often need to look at building customised integrations. The data formatting in these integrations still leaves something to be desired and therefore does not reach the same level as Marketo.
HubSpot has a low initial cost if you only want the basic functions. As you grow with marketing automation and CRM, you often want access to more advanced and complex solutions, and the price usually rises to a level similar to other larger systems.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
Salesforce's Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot) has a user-friendly and visual interface, yet a somewhat limited marketing automation tool. It has a natural integration with Salesforce CRM and offers automation features similar to those found in platforms such as Marketo or Hubspot.
Depending on the types of marketing activities you need to automate, there are likely options to achieve this through features such as automation rules and engagement programs. However, what can work against Marketing Cloud Account Engagement in some cases are the restrictions within these features, which sometimes means having to work around them to achieve your goals.
Getting Marketing Cloud Account Engagement up and running is fairly straightforward for users familiar with the Salesforce ecosystem. Because of it's user-friendly interface and UX (and once setup) It's ideal for small to mid-size teams or teams with limited technical resources.
Marketing Cloud Account Engagement has a native integration to Salesforce CRM (which provides seamless syncing between marketing and sales data), has a selection of integrations that are available out-of-the-box, and are often easy to set up. These range from webinar programs like "GoToWebinar" to social media platforms like "LinkedIn" and "Facebook." However, if looking for a more custom integration solution, there may be more requirements for an integration solution needed.
The cost of implementing Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can vary greatly depending on different factors such as company size and marketing needs. Larger organisations or those with more complex requirements may face higher costs due to the need for extensive customisation and integration. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement's pricing is generally tier-based, depending on the features and scope of the implementation.
Ready to take your Marketing Automation to the next level?
Speak with our expert Marketing Automation team today
Case studies
