Great Question Eric and I think there is 2 schools of thought - narrow and wide focus. I have chosen a wide focus and supplemented my degree with a Digital Marketing Management Certificate and Digital Graphic Design Certificate. I especially found the Strategic Selling & Strategic Customer Relationship Management at the University of Toronto to be an amazing course. I personally enjoy working at small organizations and thus being able to handle a variety of tasks has really helped my career.
When going with a narrower focus, I also think, even if you aren't using the other platforms, getting certified with Hubspot or Eloqua, or Pardot or something helps you get an idea of how other systems are promoting their version of Marketing Automation and gets you out of one ecosystems silo. Most have training courses online for free even if you don't choose to get certified. Picking those that are less platform specific and more generic are often great and can change the way you think about what you are doing. (Marketo University has great courses to take advantage of too). When you understand the tactics, applying them in a particular platform becomes a lot easier.
I also find that looking at Career Planning like I look at Lead Scoring is helpful. When starting to tweak the lead scoring model, looking at successful wins and other loses, what leads weren't ready to move forward etc, you can find the right success path. In a similar way, if you figure out where you want to be in 5, 10, 20 years, you can figure out what education/certifications will help you achieve that.
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