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12 Signs You Might Need a Salesforce Marketing Cloud Consultant
Trying to figure out if it's time to engage with Salesforce Consultant to help out with you Marketing Cloud stance can be tricky. People might think that jumping on it too early is a big risk, but at FoundHQ we believe that it's never too early to get your Salesforce stack in order.
However, if you're unsure on wether you should get outside help to work on Salesforce Marketing Cloud, here are some signs you should for.
12 Signs You Might Need a Marketing Cloud Consultant
Let's get into the most common signs pointing towards you needing to engage with a Marketing Cloud Consultant:
1. Low Email Deliverability and High Bouncing Rates
If you notice consistently low email deliverability rates and high bounce rates, it could signify underlying issues with your email sending practices. A Marketing Cloud Consultant can help you diagnose the problem by analyzing your email deliverability settings, authentication protocols (like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC), IP reputation, and sender score. They can also provide recommendations to improve email deliverability, such as implementing proper authentication, optimizing email content, and following best practices for list hygiene.
2. You Don't Have a Marketing Automation Plan Documented
A Marketing Cloud Consultant can help align your marketing automation efforts with your overall business goals and objectives. They can work with you to understand your marketing objectives, target audience, and desired outcomes. With this information, they can assist in developing a comprehensive marketing automation plan that leverages Marketing Cloud's capabilities to achieve your specific goals.
3. Your Marketing Data Is All Over The Place
If you struggle with data management, a consultant can provide valuable expertise. They can assess your data structure, identify any gaps or inconsistencies, and help you design and implement robust data management strategies. This may include setting up data extensions, synchronizing data with external systems or platforms, and establishing data workflows to ensure accuracy and consistency across your marketing ecosystem.
4. Email Opens and CTR is Poor
If your email engagement metrics, such as open rates and click-through rates, are consistently low, it may indicate issues with your email content, targeting, or personalization strategies. A Marketing Cloud Consultant can review and optimize your email templates, subject lines, preheader text, and call-to-action buttons to improve engagement.
5. Adoption is Low and User Complaints Are High
A Marketing Cloud Consultant can be a game-changer if your team is struggling with low adoption and complaints about the platform. They'll start by training and supporting your team, ensuring everyone understands how to make the most of Marketing Cloud. They'll assess your current setup, identify any issues causing dissatisfaction, and optimize the platform to streamline processes and improve user experience.
6. Your Journey Builders Setup Are Too Complex
If you are facing challenges in setting up and configuring complex customer journeys in Journey Builder, a Marketing Cloud Consultant can help you map out the customer journey, define entry and exit criteria, implement decision splits and activities, and troubleshoot any issues. Consultants can also guide you in leveraging advanced features of Journey Builder, such as custom activities and API integrations, to create sophisticated and personalized customer experiences.
7. You Have Data Privacy and Compliance Concerns
If you are operating in an industry with strict compliance requirements, such as healthcare or finance, or if you have concerns about data privacy and consent management, a Marketing Cloud Consultant can help ensure your Marketing Cloud instance is configured appropriately. They can assist in setting up secure data transfer protocols, implementing privacy preference centers, managing data retention policies, and ensuring compliance with relevant regulations such as GDPR or CCPA.
8. The In-house Team Can't Keep Up With Tickets or Requests
There are two ways a Marketing Cloud Consultant can help here. One is to leverage Consultants so that they handle the heavy lifting on tickets and fixes so that your in-house team can focus on more strategic, high-value projects.
The other is the other way around, where you bring in a more experienced Consultant who can act as a guide and execute on more strategic or bigger projects while your in-house team continues to hack away at tickets. The decision depends on the type of internal resources you have.
9. There Are Too Many Manual Processes In Your Workflows
A Marketing Cloud Consultant should be able to dive deep into your workflows, pinpoint those tedious manual tasks, and show you how to automate them. From data imports to email sends, they'll set up automation workflows and help you redesign your workflows to ensure everything flows smoothly and seamlessly.
10. Your Landing Pages Are Not Converting As They Should
A Marketing Cloud Consultant can evaluate your landing pages and identify areas for improvement. They'll analyze the design, layout, messaging, and calls-to-action to ensure they are compelling and user-friendly. They can provide recommendations on optimizing content, streamlining the layout, and enhancing the visual appeal to increase engagement and conversions.
11. You're Migrating From Another Platform Like Hubspot or Marketo
When migrating from platforms like HubSpot or Marketo to Marketing Cloud, a Marketing Cloud Consultant is your go-to guide. They'll help you devise a migration strategy, ensuring a smooth transition by mapping and migrating your data, replicating campaigns, and setting up integrations. They'll provide training and support to empower your team in using Marketing Cloud effectively. With their expertise, you'll navigate the migration process a lot faster and ensure a correct Marketing Cloud implementation.
12. You're Implementing Marketing Cloud For The First Time
They'll guide you through the entire process, from initial planning to go-live. They'll assess your marketing goals and requirements, design a customized solution, and help with data migration and integration. They'll provide training and best practices to ensure your team is equipped with the knowledge to use Marketing Cloud effectively. Their expertise will enable a smooth implementation, allowing you to leverage Marketing Cloud's capabilities to drive impactful marketing campaigns and achieve your business objectives.
FAQ
What are some Marketing Cloud alternatives?
The most common alternatives to Marketing Cloud are Marketo and Hubspot. PeerSpot has done a great job highlighting the differences in this article.
How much does Marketing Cloud cost?
Marketing Cloud Pricing can be tricky because of all the module offerings the product has. Luckily we've put together a guide to unfold all the Marketing Cloud Pricing options that Salesforce offers.
What is the hourly rate of a Marketing Cloud Consultant?
The hourly rate of an experienced Marketing Cloud Consultant depends on a variety of factors, however this page shows averages depending on area of specialty.
How exactly can a Marketing Consultant help me?
What a Marketing Cloud Consultant does is analyze the status of your stance, enlist the problems you want to solve and create a roadmap to execute on. A good consultant will not only execute but guide you through the execution of all the tasks at hand.
Should I hire an independent Marketing Cloud Consultant or a Marketing Cloud Partner?
It really depends on your budget but at FoundHQ, we believe that even in big projects where you're engaging a Consulting Firm or Partner, it's better to have an independent consultant who'll act as a part of your team. This person can make sure that what the Partner is recommending makes sense for your particular business. The main issue with Consulting Partners or Firms is that they're motivated to sell more products, more hours, more work. However, there are great Partners out there. You can check out the Top 10 Marketing Cloud Partners here.
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