CEO, Principal Consultant
8/2/2018
Product experts vs. marketing experts
Having been around Marketo for some years now I’ve experienced all sides of the coin when it comes to supporting models for Marketo. In my initial days with Marketo, we didn’t ‘take’ the support contract because as a start-up it was an extra cost, and we were happy to take the risk of support via the community.
Through various other implementations, I was later responsible for, I quickly learned there was one major “problem” with Marketo support, and something even our customers now forget when they say, “We want vendor support.”
Vendor support doesn’t cut it.
Nothing beats vendor support, right? Well, yes… if the product isn’t working. However, 9 out of 10 times we see issues which are related to how the user is trying to apply the technology and not a problem with the product itself. No disrespect to Marketo’s fantastic support team, but they’re technical / product experts, not marketing experts. Meaning they know how to use the technology, but probably haven’t seen (or used) first hand the technology in live circumstances.
Marketo professional services are probably the only team who do get more hands-on with clients, but even in my experience, they’re still product experts for generalised usage to get clients up and running and thinking automation.
Cost difference
As ever, costs vary from client to client and use case to use case, but on average we see around £120/hour (£960/day) being the cost for Marketo (product) support. If you’re then looking for advice on how to apply the technology in a best practice manner, then you’d need a Marketo Certified Expert (MCE) or Marketo Certified Consultant (MCC) which on industry averages work out to be around £550/day.
The benefit of an experienced MCE or MCC is that they’ve implemented the technology and built marketing automation maturity. They’re not only technical experts but marketing experts too!
Find out more about our Marketo support services
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