Marketo Engage marketing automation skills are always in demand. If you run a quick LinkedIn Job search for Marketo, you’ll find hundreds of job openings.
That’s a huge number!
But expertise is a subjective term on a sliding scale, and a few factors determine whether an applicant has the right profile to be a true Marketo expert. Whether you’re a recruiter, manager, director, or current or future Admin, it’s essential that everyone is working off the same page.
Most organizations deploying marketing automation don’t have the luxury of employing a purely execution-focused Marketo resource. They need experts that bridge the gap between strategy and execution within the tool, making the role part architect, part builder, part project manager, and part advisor.
To fit this mold, consider the following 10 attributes and skills as the framework for a Marketo Expert profile. Attributes are not easily trainable and reflect how someone approaches their work and how they think. Skills can be trained and are proficiencies related to specific tasks or actions and can be trained. Broadening the definition beyond skills better fits the realities of being a Marketo Admin and the value they bring to the organization.
And, if you need Marketo expertise, we’re a Platinum Parter and 3x Partner of the Year and can fill critical gaps on your team!
The Basics
Attributes should be considered baseline for Marketo Admins. These reflect more about a person’s approach to their work than specific skills that can be trained. If any of these attributes are missing, effectiveness is going to suffer.
Exceptional Marketo Admins aren’t button-pushers.
They see the bigger picture – the business objectives and marketing strategy – through the lens of Marketo. They don’t simply execute a campaign, but instead advise on its design and structure to help achieve the best results for the organization. They’re constantly scanning the market and your organization’s results to proactively suggest new approaches that will improve marketing effectiveness or generate greater growth from your current investments.
They’re disciplined.
They’re able to independently balance their work and manage production schedules. They can coordinate resources and hold others accountable for delivering on-time. Often, they do this without formal authority.
They’re doggedly results-driven people.
Admins don’t care about vanity metrics (looking at your opens and clicks). They constantly push their peers to evaluate their marketing against business and marketing objectives, both retroactively in assessing performance and during planning phases, ensuring that current activities are directly linked (at least in intent) to moving the business forward.
Trainable Items
Using Marketo is largely trainable. The skills necessary to operate the platform can be learned and honed with training and consistent application. Having the following skills, in combination with the above attributes, often yields an incredibly effective Admin.
The list is straightforward, though certainly not simple in practice.
Related: Marketo Engage online training courses – with three skill levels
The best Marketo admins are HTML / coding savvy.
There are many ways to learn HTML code. On the fly, sites like Stack Overflow and W3Schools offer immediate assistance. More formal education through Codecademy is another great way to enhance HTML skills. Regardless of how the skills are acquired, understanding and leveraging code is critical for effective UX, another must-have skill.
They understand the need for data governance and architecture.
Admins need to understand the long-term implications of the data architecture and data quality. They need to be able to define an architecture that supports business requirements and facilitates effective integration with a CRM. This is both a technical and strategic skill set.
They are analytically-inclined people.
As masters of the platform and experts in the data structure, Admins must be able to build reports that answer business questions; and they should be able to analyze those reports to provide extra insights relevant to business users. They should be obsessed with, and curious about, measuring business impact.
They socialize best practices throughout the org.
Once reports are built and insights extracted, they must share best practices with their teammates and the broader organization. They should be able to catalogue these practices for future team members to leverage. This way, the entire marketing automation team has a consistent process and message when advising the rest of the marketing organization.
They translate strategy and technology equally well.
Marketo Admins must have the ability to translate campaign and program strategy into executable programs in Marketo. This often involves taking broad definitions of an audience and identifying specific fields and values necessary for effective segmentation.
Similarly, they’re called upon to review and digest engagement strategies and create program structures within the platform.
They are UX Sherpas.
Again stepping into an advisor role, they must guide marketers in the creation of emails, landing pages and campaigns that effectively engage their audience and offer exceptional user experiences. This means considering the impact of screen size, context, past behavior and other factors on messaging and content.
They think in multi- or omni-channel terms.
Modern marketing requires consistent messaging and experiences across many channels such as email, digital ads and social media. Coordinating these messages isn’t always the responsibility of an Admin, but they should be well-versed in these channels to understand how they operate and what any technical considerations are when it comes to deploying content within them.
This knowledge is essential to ensure Marketo picks up and consumes user data and behavior from them.
Related: Omni-channel vs. multi-channel marketing, explained
Closing Thoughts
Clearly, Marketo Admins are much more complex, and consequently valuable, than simple platform operators. Effective Admins connect the marketing strategy and technology into a mutually beneficial ecosystem. They serve as both architect and builder while simultaneously advising their internal clients on approaches to maximize their returns.
So, what to do next?
- Look into Marketo online classes for beginner and advanced users, including our MCE Prep for advanced users in your organization
- See how our flexible services options, from campaign development to integration work to running your entire Marketo instance, can help you!