What if we told you there’s a way to meet your KPIs faster, uncover blind spots and areas of growth, save time and money, and operate according to best practices?
You’d probably jump on it.
We have two words for you: Marketo audit. Whether you’ve had Marketo for 10+ years or are inheriting a legacy Marketo Instance, performing health checks is a crucial step to accelerating value from Marketo.
We sat down with Jon Kent, Senior Vice President of Sales at MERGE, to better understand the demand for Marketo audits, how to know if your Instance is ready for an audit, and the common steps included in a Marketo audit.
So, why are Marketo audits becoming increasingly more popular these days?
We’ve all heard of the Great Resignation by now – in December 2021 alone, 4.3 million people quit their jobs according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employers began to feel the effects of the Great Resignation in the early stages of the pandemic, where employees began to quit their jobs in search of better work-life balance, higher salaries, and increased job satisfaction.
Marketing operations was hit particularly hard – hiring in marketing operations was tough as it is, and the Great Resignation made it that much more challenging.
With marketing operations folks changing jobs in every direction, we’re finding that the institutional knowledge is leaving with them. When you pair this with a lack of documentation, you’ll find it’s incredibly challenging for a new person to come in and understand what was going on.
That’s typically when we’ll receive the call requesting help – marketing operations teams need someone to come in to tell them:
- What the last person was doing
- Why Marketo was set up the way it was
- An overall health check
Another common situation we’ll see is teams who have had Marketo for 10+ years. Just like the situation above, they want a health check and an understanding of why their Instance was set up the way it is. Whether their Instance was neglected or over-engineered, having a seasoned marketing operations expert analyze your Instance can improve reporting metrics, maximize your ROI, and most importantly, save money.
How do you know if your Marketo Instance is ready for an audit?
Truth is, most people don’t know. From my experience, the process typically looks something like this:
A client contacts us about a specific problem – whether something is not working or there’s an issue with sync. We’ll ask how long this issue has been going on, and if they’re experiencing any other problems that are similar in nature.
Documentation plays a crucial role in understanding why your Marketo Instance was set up in a particular way, so we’ll ask if they have documentation. More often than not, the client has no documentation, therefore, we have no explanation for the technical approach.
Typically, it’s a compilation of factors like this that tell us we should be thinking about an audit as a first step. There is that lightbulb moment when our clients understand the benefits of an audit and we often hear, “this is exactly what we need!”
What does the process typically look like – what can clients expect from a Marketo audit?
Our team goes beyond listing what’s broken – although this step alone is helpful and can get teams off on the right foot, we'll go through the following steps:
- Define the areas of opportunity
- Scope the size of the solution
- Prioritize which opportunities are most important to pursue first, and determine order of operations and interdependencies
- Conduct the roadmap development
One of the most beneficial outcomes of an audit goes well beyond the operational nature of the project. With the results of the audit and prioritizing opportunities, we can work with marketing operations teams to build a roadmap for the future.
The audit is just the starting point – it’s the beginning of several months and even years of strategic work.
Keep your health in check
Overall, Marketo audits are a good practice that keeps your Instance clean and tidy and operating according to best practices. Oftentimes, it takes an outside perspective to uncover blind spots and areas of underutilization so that you can get the most out of your Marketo investment. You’ll find when your Instance is operating according to best practices, lead quality will increase as well as a stronger alignment between marketing and sales.