Earlier this week I asked the good people of Purple Select a question. If you could give your younger self one piece of advice while you were learning to use Marketo, what would it be? It didn't take long before I had a wealth of valuable answers that covered a wide variety of ideas and best practices. It only made sense that I share my 10 favorite answers with the Community, one of the best (if not THE best) places to go for new Marketo users. Let's get right into it.
Top 10 Tips for New Marketo Users
1) Set aside time each week to really dig in and read the docs.
2) Learn how to do things the right way the first time!
3) Create better study material, you'll need it when you are renewing your certification.
4) Document everything! In addition to process documentation, take notes as your instance evolves. You will never remember all the changes it goes through so you can benefit from having historical details about what's been done.
5) Embrace the data. It may be a tough and dirty task to get data clean, but once you do you can focus on bigger and brighter things!
6) Organization! Be sure to keep all folder and assets well organized. Make sure to go through old programs and shut them down and archive them.
7) Ask how others solving the problem you are trying to solve. People have amazingly creative solutions.
😎 I know it has been said, posted and talked about ad nauseum, but CLONE!! Clone all the things!! It is the best feature of Marketo, hands down! Instead of having to create programs and campaigns and reports from scratch, just clone a previous one and edit it to fit your current need.
9) Go to the Community! You can learn a lot just based on what people post every day, but it's great to couple that with Marketo docs. For example, when you read a doc about connecting GoToWebinar, go search the community to find out what people have posted about that product, about how to set up, common questions they have and best practices. You can teach yourself a LOT using these two tools.
10) My best advice would be not to rush into setting up your Marketo account until you have a strategy on how you want to set it up (ie - naming conventions, folder organization if you have multiple brands you marketo to, etc). I have no choice but to rush in getting my account set up and over a year later, I'm finding myself having to go back in and fix/reorganize a lot of things that I might have been able to avoid if I'd had more time to plan before hand.
Honorable Mentions
- Read everything and watch all the videos you can when you're getting started. You can start implementing the best practices the whole time.
- Immerse yourself in Marketo Community. I was self-taught and I found this to be the best resource.
- Tokens, tokens, tokens.
- Spend more time in the community! Even if you aren't answering the questions you should read about the successes, issues, and challenges other users are having. (See a common theme with Community?)
I want to extend a huge thank you to everyone who participated in this challenge on Purple Select. The Marketo Community continues to have one of the most active and engaged customer bases out there. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, expertise, and best practices with new and veteran Marketo users alike!
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If you have more tips and tricks that you would like to share with us, then I want to share some rewards with you! The challenge is still available in Purple Select, so feel free to head over there and submit your advice. If you don't have a Purple Select account set up, you'll be excited to hear we just made it even easier to sign up! Our sign in page now has a "sign up" button near the bottom on the page that allows you to submit all of the necessary information. After a member of the Customer Marketing team confirms your nomination, you'll gain access to Purple Select! If you have any additional questions, please reach out to me at (wharmon@marketo.com) and I will happily assist in any way I can!
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