Lead Consultant - EMEA & APAC
3/1/2023
For any marketing team to be successful, ongoing training and development is critical. With marketing techniques and automation tools changing all the time, your team needs to stay on top of their game – and this goes for users of Marketo Engage too!
The benefits of Marketo training
The benefits of good Marketo training include:
- A greater understanding of Marketo best practice. There’s often more than one way to do something in Marketo, but picking the best option isn’t always obvious. Great training will help do things the best way possible
- A more efficient team will execute campaigns faster and free up other’s time in terms of review and approval
- Training will help alleviate mistakes
- So much is possible with Marketo – training will help users get the full benefit of all its functionality – maximising value from the platform
- By spreading the knowledge and growing a skill-set across the team, this alleviates the risk of relying too heavily on a single in-house expert. Having multiple users on the platform can spark new ideas and new ways of doing things
- Offering training makes people feel valued
Marketo training – why it’s always bottom of the to do list
Unfortunately, there’s often a multitude of reasons why Marketo training gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list!
Typical excuses include:
“We just don’t have time”, “we don’t know what we don’t know”, “we don’t have the funding” and “standard training won’t work for our instance of Marketo”.
In this post we’re going to address these concerns and show you how it’s possible for your team to get the training and hands-on experience they need to take their Marketo skills to the next level.
Five tips for Marketo training success
1.ㅤEnsure your whole team makes time for training
Whilst training chosen individuals on Marketo can boost performance, training an entire team can bring scalable benefits. Training therefore needs to be a priority for all! Obviously, some team members may require more in-depth knowledge than others, but if everyone can have an overall level of understanding it makes conversations about the possibilities in Marketo much more productive.
2.ㅤBridge the skill gaps
Identify training gaps across your team. The easiest way to do this is by building a matrix of all Marketo capabilities and mapping what skills each user already has and identifying where the gaps are. This can be done by asking each individual to rank their ability, or by asking line managers for their input, or both.
3.ㅤDevelop a framework for success
Breaking up Marketo training into bite-size chunks will make it much more attainable for your team. By providing everyone with a personalised training plan, they will know what is expected of them and be able to track their progress.
Training is also not a one-off exercise.
4.ㅤIdentify experts
Naturally some Marketo users will be more skilled than others – and each person’s area of expertise may differ e.g one person may be excellent at lead scoring, whilst another may have a great understanding of creating smart campaigns.
It makes sense to utilise the expertise you have in-house to support those who need additional training. The training matrix above will help identify your ‘go to’ person for each skill.
5.ㅤUtilise different forms of training
It’s a well-known fact that people learn in different ways – some are visual learners, others learn by doing, while others pick things up better if written down or listened to.
If possible, try and give your team access to as many training options as possible e.g written resources, videos, 1-2-1 training etc.
You should also aim to standardise your training resources too, so only Marketo best practice is communicated. This will ensure you’re all on the same page and create uniformity across work processes.
Don’t forget training materials will need to be kept up-to-date as new functionality and updates are always appearing in Marketo!
No resource to train your team? No problem!
Whilst in principle, the above sounds easy to implement, in reality many marketing managers lack the time and resources to deliver training in-house. Whilst Marketo users often don’t know where to look for the best training courses or materials.
If this is the case for you, remember JTF Marketing offers a suite of self-paced, online Marketo training courses to cater to every skill-set, from beginner to MCE-level. The courses allow registrants to work at their own pace, with regular reminders and visibility of progress to keep motivation high.
Most importantly we provide access to our Marketo-certified experts, with regular check-ins to give one-on-one feedback, check understanding and answer any questions.
However, if you’d prefer customised training, we can also create and deliver bespoke programmes, designed for your team’s specific requirements. That’s exactly what we did for our customer Renishaw, when they asked us to support with their onboarding of 38 users across the globe.
“The guys at JTF Marketing provide extra firepower with their real-world experience of marketing automation and deliver genuine, commercial value. They’ve helped us to progress from ad-hoc marketing activities to experience-led, planned campaigns that are focused and goal-driven”.
Watch our on-demand webinar ‘Upskill your team in Marketo Engage‘ for more top tips on how to optimise your Marketo training experience.