If you are trying to find out the best way to automate and keep track of all of your marketing activities and you wish to unite your marketing and sales departments so that they can better work together, then you certainly have to take a look at Marketing Automation tools from Salesforce. This article is aimed to throw light on the different uses and benefits of Pardot and Marketing Cloud, explain how companies, whatever B2B or B2C can benefit using these tools, and how to discern which one is suitable for your business.
Using Pardot
Pardot is typically going to be used as a B2B focus platform. As Pardot is integrated into the Lightning app, it is easier than ever to align Sales and Marketing teams all in one place. The teams become more productive because they do not need to switch between multiple apps and they have all the tools they need in one place. While sales exactly know the steps to qualify Leads, marketing communicates trends, behaviors, and strategies via a single platform.
Also, Pardot is best suited for businesses in which a long sales cycle and minimum marketing efforts are prevalent because it has enhanced functionality for excellent Lead nurture, based on intelligent Lead grading and scoring. Lead Scores evaluate customer engagement (how your customer is interacting with your company web pages, platforms, emails, and so forth), whereas Lead Grades evaluate your customers’ profiles and how they fit your organization (e.g.: Is this the right demographic for my company? Is this the type of client I want?). Based on these scores the best Leads can actually be converted into the good Contacts within a minimum timeframe.
Pardot out-of-the-box features can manage 2 channels: Email and Social. In case the use of other channels is required, there are many plugins at service available on AppExchange to connect Pardot with other marketing channels.
Resource: https://www.pardot.com/solutions/b2b-marketing-automation/
Alright, having covered Pardot then comes another Salesforce Marketing Automatization platform – Marketing Cloud.
Marketing Cloud is digital marketing software for B2C companies. Its main goal is 1-to-1 engagement with consumers, users, and subscribers through multi-channel capability with Journey Builder, more advanced data segmentation with Contact Builder, highly effective advertising campaigns with Ads Studio, etc. Furthermore, it is also possible to segregate data with parent level business units and child business units beneath. So if a company organizes its system by brand, region, or department with Marketing Cloud company’s employees from different divisions can be sure that they share the data to the right people in the most trustful and secure way
Marketing Cloud vs Pardot: Similar features
Both solutions offer such functionality as email automation, creation of forms and landing pages, lead nurture journey mapping, social media marketing, web tracking (which may be a little bit easier with Pardot out-of-the-box, but still also possible with Marketing Cloud), CRM integration, and so on.
But wait, there’s more…
Does it make sense to use both of these platforms together?
These platforms can perfectly work together as they have quite different advantages and different use purposes. Let’s look at cases when a company can use both of these platforms on different stages of the customer lifecycle.
1. Attract Audience and Capture Lead.
During a basic Lead lifecycle, Marketing Cloud can be used to make customers aware of your company’s basic information by sending general information about your organization, what your organization does, informing them about your products found in any landing pages or forms on your website. Both platforms can be used to capture that Lead.
2. Nurture Potential Customers.
Pardot has advanced abilities to nurture Leads. The primary goal of this step is to convert Leads into Contacts. Identify the hottest Leads with intelligent Lead grading and scoring.
3. Purchase.
Leads could be converted into Contacts in both Marketing Cloud or Pardot.
4. Up-sell and Retain Customers.
Once Contact already made the target action (purchase), marketers can return them to Marketing Cloud. Also, as the platform already stores client’s information and is aware of the preferences and purchase histories, the platform can add these clients to the up-sell and retention campaigns in Journey Builder to maintain long term relationships with the company’s clients.
To round up we would like to notice that despite the widely spread opinion that Pardot is the best choice for B2B, while B2C companies go for Marketing Cloud both these solutions can complement each other to achieve the main goal of business - build the strong relationship with customers and create the most personalized engagement possible.
