Salesforce brings companies and customers together, helping over 150,000 companies grow their businesses. It has two popular platforms that are taking marketing automation to the next level—Pardot and Marketing Cloud.
However, choosing between the two platforms can be challenging. Knowing the platforms’ differences and how they can fit your business can be beneficial.
To help you decide which option may be right for your business, below is a guide that covers what makes each platform unique.
What is Pardot?
Pardot is a marketing automation platform that helps businesses to generate leads and automate sales processes. As a marketer, it allows you to track web visitor interactions via cookies. It also streamlines lead nurturing to drive more sales.
With Pardot, you can track engagements, follow up on prospective customers, and get high-quality leads. This platform makes capturing leads a lot easier and keeps your customers coming back.
What is Marketing Cloud?
Marketing Cloud is a digital automation system that merges all of your marketing channels — not just email. With this consolidated unit, you can take your automation to the next level.
When you use Marketing Cloud, you get to personalise the way you convert prospects. The platform allows customers to define the types of relationships they have with brands.
The customer journey on this platform can expand across devices and channels. This creates a unique one-to-one experience between potential clients and your brand.
What Are the Differences Between Pardot and Marketing Cloud?
Pardot and Marketing Cloud are Salesforce products. But they differ in several ways. Here are some key differences to consider:
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: B2B vs. B2C Model
If you have a B2B business model, Pardot is a suitable choice for you. The platform functions mainly as a lead nurture engine. It features structured tactics and an out-of-the-box setup closely aligned with the cycle of your sales team.
Pardot focuses on converting prospects among businesses instead of people. It works best with smaller customer databases. The platform is also ideal for high-value service and product engagements that have extended consideration periods.
To get the most value out of Pardot, pair it with a capable sales team that will work to close the sale offline.
On the other hand, Marketing Cloud is ideal for a B2C model— a business that sells directly to consumers. The platform allows for multi-channel communications with 1:1 personalisation. The automation tool offers open-source development capabilities.
It also supports several development languages so you can use it to build tailored programs to fit your business.
Pardot vs Marketing Cloud: Functionality
At its core, Pardot is a lead generation automation tool that branches into a lead nurturing system. With this platform, you get:
- Lead generation: Uses Pardot marketing tools to automate the process of capturing and collecting data from prospective customers
- Email marketing: Craft, schedule, and send customised emails to your prospects
- Prospect segmentation: Segment your potential customers with lead grading and lead scoring
- Prospect management: Finds people engaging with your content the most. It also helps you connect with them through tailored campaigns
- Marketing and sales alignment: Sync with Salesforce CRM to help reinforce the sales funnel, enhance future marketing efforts, and calculate marketing ROI
Conversely, Marketing Cloud offers something for each area of marketing. Here are features that you can expect from the platform:
- Email Studio: Creates custom email campaigns
- Mobile Studio: Manages tailored interactions such as push notifications, SMS, and chat messages
- Social Studio: Lets you interact with customers across social media platforms
- Advertising: Utilises CRM data to align your online ads and find new prospects
- Journey Builder: Develop bespoke 1:1 consumer journeys across all channels
- Marketing Cloud Intelligence (formerly Datorama): Connect, analyse, and take action on all your KPIs and data in an all-in-one marketing tool
Pardot vs Marketing Cloud: Interface & Integration
Pardot is designed to align with the sales cycles of your team. It can be used as a standalone software as a service (SaaS) product but is best leveraged connecting to your Salesforce CRM. It triggers automations and infrastructure that rely profoundly on the Lead, Contact and Opportunity data in your Salesforce CRM.
This design sets up an ideal scenario for your sales team. As a result, they don’t require a technical skillset to use the platform and your Salesforce Admin can setup Pardot to be used from inside Salesforce. No second platform to login to. But you may have a hard time using Pardot if you are planning to send large e-blasts like announcements and newsletters. This is because Pardot has a Prospect limit, but this can be increased by talking to your Salesforce Account Executive.
Marketing Cloud’s interface is much aligned similar to what you may expect with a traditional Marketing Hub. The features and capabilities are well organised into studios. From these studios, you can access your automation, assets, and landing pages.
While Marketing Cloud can act as a stand-alone software as a service (SaaS), its real power comes into play when you connect the platform to a Salesforce CRM. If you are looking to integrate a CRM with Marketing Cloud, ensure that you assess your CRM and data strategy before taking in Marketing Cloud. It will save you a lot of unforeseen costs down the line.
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: Data Storage
Pardot offers a variety of objects for storing and managing customer data. They include:
- Prospects: The core object in Pardot, stores information about individual leads, such as their contact information, demographic data, and engagement history
- Lists: Store groups of prospects segmented based on specific criteria, such as location, industry, or engagement level
- Campaigns: Store information about marketing campaigns including performance metrics and tools used
In Salesforce Marketing Cloud, data is stored in two types of objects:
- Data Extensions: Flexible objects that let you store and manage data in a variety of formats such as customer
- Lists: More rigid objects that store data in a fixed format useful in segmenting and targeting specific groups
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: Specific Features and Add-ons
Compared to Marketing Cloud, Pardot does not presently have as many premium-feature offerings. The platform is mainly for email marketing. Its built-in tools are intended to help with your lead-generation efforts.
This automation also lets you set up automated actions depending on customer behaviour to provide just-in-time communications to your prospective customers.
On the contrary, Marketing Cloud keeps getting bigger. This is due to Salesforce’s aggressive investments in new Martech acquisitions. As a result, it has grown into a marketing hub juggernaut. It has custom marketing features like Datorama, Interaction Studio, Mobile Studio, and more.
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: Engagements
When it comes to engaging with your customers, Pardot allows you to align greater sales and marketing efforts for B2B teams. This tool focuses on providing a single platform for sales and marketing teams to work together.
On the other hand, Marketing Cloud focuses more on 1:1 customer journeys. What’s more, it offers a range of tools for managing customer interactions across various channels.
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: Ease of Use
Pardot is known for its user-friendly interface. It also offers easy-to-use features, such as its drag-and-drop editor and customisable templates. This makes it a good choice for businesses that want to quickly set up and start using marketing automation without a steep learning curve.
The Marketing Cloud, on the other hand, can be more complex. It may require more time and resources to set up and manage.
Since it has a wider range of features and tools, it can be overwhelming for some users. You will need a technical skillset to use it.
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: The Buying Cycle
The buying cycle refers to the process that a potential customer goes through when considering a purchase. When it comes to the main differences between Pardot and Marketing Cloud, you can’t leave out the buying cycle.
Pardot is generally better suited for businesses with smaller databases and higher-valued sales. This is because it’s more focused on helping businesses engage with potential customers much earlier in the buying cycle.
Conversely, Marketing Cloud is better suited for businesses with large databases and smaller-valued sales. The platform tends to focus on helping businesses engage with customers throughout the entire buying cycle—from awareness to decision to action.
Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud: Pricing
Pricing for both Pardot and Marketing Cloud vary depending on the edition and the number of contacts in your database. Learn more about the pricing model below.
Pardot Pricing Model
The cost of using Pardot varies depending on the features and functionality that you need for your business. There are four editions available:
- Standard
- Professional
- Ultimate
- Premier
The Standard edition is suitable for small businesses, while the Professional, Ultimate, and Premier editions are geared towards larger organizations with more advanced marketing needs.
Prices for the Standard edition start at $1,250 per month for up to 10,000 prospects. Prices for the Professional, Ultimate, and Premier editions are customized based on the specific needs of each organization.
Marketing Cloud Pricing Model
The cost of Marketing Cloud increases with the number of users and the level of functionality that you need. There are four editions available:
- Essentials
- Professional
- Enterprise
- Performance
Prices for the Essentials edition start at $1,500 per month for up to 500,000 contacts. For Professional, Enterprise, and Performance editions, prices are customized based on the specific needs of each organization.
Factors to Consider When Choosing Between Pardot vs. Marketing Cloud
Don’t know whether to use Pardot or Marketing Cloud. Here are some factors you may want to consider when choosing between the two:
The Digital Channels You Want to Use
Determine the digital marketing platforms you want to use with your marketing. Pardot offers a range of tools for email marketing, lead generation, and social media marketing.
Marketing Cloud can be ideal for multiple channels. This includes email, mobile, social media, and more.
The Size of Your Prospect/Customer Database
Evaluate your customer database. If you have small to medium-sized businesses, Pardot may be ideal for you. Marketing Cloud is much more suited for larger enterprises with larger databases.
What You Want To Achieve
If you are looking to automate marketing processes and improve lead generation, focus on Pardot. Marketing Cloud may be an ideal tool for your business in case you want more customer segmentation, personalisation, and engagement.
Invest in the Right Salesforce Products for Your Business
Choosing between the two marketing automation tools—Pardot vs Marketing Cloud—can be challenging. But not anymore. The aforementioned guide can help you pick the right Salesforce platform for your product.
At Komet, we’re experts in Salesforce development solutions. Get in touch with us and let us help you grow to scale.