Pardot is a B2B marketing automation solution that empowers businesses to sell more effectively and build long – term customer relationships. It is mainly a software as a service (SaaS) marketing automation platform by Salesforce offering e-mail automation, targeted email campaigns and lead management for B2B sales and marketing organizations.
Marketing cloud, on the other hand, is a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform for marketers that allows them to create and manage marketing relationships and campaign with customers.
While both the solutions are automation and digital analytics platforms and both have the same functionalities, there are a few key differences between the two which we will further be talking about, aiding you in making a better decision as to which one you should use for what purpose.
- While Pardot is positioned as a B2B solution, marketing cloud is more of a B2C solution. Pardot’s strengths lie in the areas of marketing and sales alignment, lead management and automated actions, as well as marketing campaigns.
Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, offers greater capabilities when it comes to social media marketing and advertising, plus SMS campaigns. Naturally, these types of activities tend to be a bigger focus for B2C brand.
- They also differ in terms of the buying cycle. Smaller databases with higher value sales are better targeted via Pardot and larger databases with smaller value sales tend to do better with Marketing Cloud.
- In terms of ideal industries for each of these solutions, Pardot is mainly used for professional services while Marketing cloud is best used in retail, FMCG, health & beauty, travel and Non-profit organisations.
- If we look into the integration of these solutions with respect to Salesforce, Pardot is aligned with Sales Cloud. This means that Pardot ‘talks’ to many of the standard Salesforce objects (Leads, Contacts, Opportunities).
Salesforce Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, is not built on the core Salesforce platform; instead, connectors are used to sync data bidirectionally between the two.
- If one considers interface and integration as a parameter, he/she will come across a difference between the two solutions. Pardot is structured to align to a user’s sales team’s sales cycles. Its infrastructure, triggers, and automations rely heavily on the Account, Lead, and Opportunity objects in Salesforce CRM products.
Marketing cloud’s interface, on the other hand, is more aligned to what you would traditionally expect within a Marketing Hub. The capabilities and features are organized into studios where you can access your assets, audiences, automations, and landing pages.
- When we look into specific features and add- ons, Pardot is primarily for email marketing. Pardot’s built-in tools and integrations are designed to help with user’s lead generation and tracking efforts. It offers landing pages and form field integrations to help collect and add to user’s prospect info, cookie-based conversion and visitor behaviour tracking.
In comparison to Pardot, Marketing Cloud has become a marketing hub juggernaut which includes Interaction Studio for real-time website personalization and testing, Salesforce CDP for gathering and joining additional metadata about the customers, Mobile Studio for all the SMS and Push Notifications, Datarama for media cost and ROI analysis, and Journey Builder for planning out complex multi-touch marketing strategies.
- With respect to Reporting and Analysis, users can find a difference between the two solutions. Pardot’s analytics reports are geared to support user’s sales team by providing cost and campaign tracking. It also leverages report automation with customizable views and dashboards to accelerate user’s sales team response to follow up opportunities.
Conversely, Marketing Cloud’s out-of-the-box reporting doesn’t cover all the potential use-cases that Marketing Cloud has or granular reporting on the 1:1 connection users are making with their customers.
Now that we have gained an insight into the key differences between both the solutions, it is significant to understand that despite the differences, both platforms are great and will serve any business efficiently in their own ways. Depending on a user’s business needs either will work well.
Whether one chooses Pardot or Marketing Cloud, they should always strive to keep the data in sync across their Salesforce platforms and all other business tools. Data velocity will be pivotal in getting the most out of either tool. The key to success with either tool will be to opt for real-time or near-real time automations and integrations.
Galvantrix, a partner of Salesforce, has helped its customers with both the Marketing cloud as well as Pardot, to aid them in running their businesses efficiently while tracking all the sales related information.
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