Ever since I started my Salesforce journey at Stellaxius, as a marketer, I decided to focus on Pardot. This great journey has already brought me two Pardot certifications: Pardot Specialist and Pardot Consultant.
As you may have been expecting, whereas the Specialist exam puts more emphasis on the user’s knowledge about the platform, the Consultant one attributes more weight to how the platform is configured, implemented, and administrated. Thus, as for the latter, most of the questions asked are scenario-based, and they address marketing best practices.
Besides, another interesting difference between the two exams is the length of the questions. The Pardot Consultant exam is a “wordy” test and you need to be prepared to read everything carefully, as the tiniest detail can completely lead you to the wrong answer. But do not despair, as I will share with you the study material you need to succeed, as well as some tips on how to pass the exam.
Additionally, if you have any further questions, do not hesitate to ask them in Lisbon, Portugal B2B Marketers Group. This great group is led by my colleague Catarina Barros, and I am an active user in it.
Get the exam guide
As you may already know, the exam guide should always be the first thing to read when you decide to take a Salesforce certification. You can check the Pardot Consultant exam guide here. Moreover, I would advise you to read it carefully and to pay close attention to covered topics in the exam and the weights of each of its sections. Another tip: do not neglect their recommended training and references!
Even if you are experienced in Pardot implementations, I would advise you to always check the content shared in the exam guide, not because it is going to be new, but rather to structure and consolidate the knowledge you need to successfully pass the test.
Use and abuse Help Salesforce
There are plenty of Pardot Consultant exam questions online, so just answer them and test your knowledge! However, bear in mind that some may be misleading, ambiguous, or even provide incorrect answers. Make sure you always have a help.salesforce.com open tab to double-check if those answers make sense.
Now, going entirely through Pardot help from Salesforce is an option. If you decided to do it, be clever and try to focus on the sections that are not only important to pass the Pardot Consultant exam, but are also common knowledge you need to be applied to clients’ projects.
The topics covered in the Salesforce Consultant exam
Find them below and become ready to crush the exam:
Pardot Administration – Covers how you handle the management of the platform, its configuration, and the management of users.
Automation rules – Goes through the basics of automation rules. How you can create them, and the available criteria and actions you can apply. They also provide some examples of how to use the automation rules.
Choosing the right automation tool – This part of the help section is really important. In fact, many questions are directly or indirectly related to this part. Since it is mostly a scenario-based test, knowing what type of tools you can use to automate your marketing processes (following the best practices) is essential to pass the test.
Lead Generation with forms and forms handlers – It analysis the difference between form handlers and forms, as well as the main features you can use to make your lead generation work in Pardot.
Email Marketing with Pardot – Last but not least, bear in mind that Pardot is an email marketing automation tool. This means that how you create different types of emails, use content personalization strategies, and measure and report the marketing efforts will be permanently put into the test during the exam. Therefore, I recommend you to take a careful look into this Help section.
Trailheads
Trailheads make it fun to learn Pardot. Thus, it is worth mentioning that Salesforce already puts some effort into creating trails that are more focused on the consolidation of important marketing concepts and understanding of how the platform works, in a gamified way.
Here follows a link for the Pardot trailmix, in which you have all the Pardot trails. Nevertheless, do not expect to have practical exercises, as it may happen in other Salesforce areas.
Quizlet
Apart from the above-mentioned study material made available by Salesforce, to study for my Pardot Consultant exam, I also used Quizlet. This platform offers a wide array of questions published by users! Here, you can test your knowledge of a particular field of study. Fortunately, if you are thinking about taking the Pardot Specialist exam, there are also plenty of flashcards to study for it in Quizlet.
Now, since Quizlet does not work under official Salesforce content, be aware that not all questions are accurate. Having said that, the quantity of study material and good material make this platform worth a try. In case you have any doubts on the correctness of the answers, just go ahead and check Salesforce Help, which is always reliable.
Below you may find two quizlets which can help you prepare for the Pardot Consultant exam:
Final tips
Besides the typical “Focus and pay attention to questions” or the “Be relaxed the day before and have a good night of sleep” advice, I would recommend you to read the latest Pardot Releases. These last two years we saw major changes in Pardot, and we all expect an increase in the rate of newly released functionalities. Keeping yourself updated on the tool’s new features allows you to make the most of it and per se enhances your knowledge of it.
We also publish on this blog a brief review of the latest releases in the Salesforce ecosystem (Pardot Included). So if you are interested in, do not forget to take a look at them!
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