How to Succeed in the Pardot Specialist Certification Exam

About the Exam

Boring yet useful technicalities and that tiny bit of motivation you need

Pardot Specialist – Is it me you are looking for?

Pardot is the B2B Marketing Automation tool by Salesforce. Thus, the Pardot Specialist Certification is the official Salesforce certification aimed at marketers who already are familiar with designing and building marketing assets and processes in Pardot.

If you are thinking about taking this exam, you should already have some Pardot and marketing knowledge, such as email marketing, lead lifecycle management (lead generation, lead nurturing and lead qualification), marketing campaign management and report usage to make data-driven decisions.

Also, the Pardot Consultant Certification is another official exam you may take after, since it requires that you are Pardot Specialist Certified.

Why should I get certified?

Here’s why you’ll surely want that Pardot Specialist Badge in your CV:

• Getting Pardot Certified can only do you good! It allows you to go through essential marketing concepts, revisiting old ones, and learning new topics! Your marketing knowledge becomes much more methodical and organized when studying for this exam (believe me, it happened to me too).
• Whether you like it or not, the truth is that having a piece of paper or a PDF file proofing your knowledge is essential these days. When unsure about two candidates, I can assure you the employer will pick the certified one. Your Pardot Specialist Certification will undoubtedly increase your market value. From my personal experience, I’ve seen my LinkedIn messaging and contacting attempts boosting since I’ve promoted my certification on social media. However, if you feel like none of this is enough of a reason to get your certification, let me tell you that becoming certified will make you more confident when talking about marketing automation and Pardot itself.
• Certifications are also a great way to keep you updated with Pardot releases, since they make it mandatory for you to read about the developments of the tool. “Mandatory”? Yes, you have read it right. Yearly, you must take the certification maintenance Trailhead in order to keep your badge. Thank god, the maintenance Trailheads are quick and easy to take and a good way to keep you updated.

Pardot Specialist VS Pardot Consultant

Now that you are aware of what Pardot Specialist is and why should you take this exam, let me tell you how it differs from the Pardot Consultant Certification.

The main difference is that the latter is designed for individuals who have already implemented Pardot at a client project. Therefore, for the Consultant exam you must have experience configuring Pardot to meet customer business requirements. Whereas for the Pardot Specialist exam you must proof knowledge on the tool’s capabilities and familiarity with the automation concepts and possibilities – more related to the daily and practical use of Pardot. You do not necessarily need to reveal expertise on how to implement it on a client consultancy level.

When to take the exam?

There is no linear rule for when to take the Pardot Specialist Exam. I have taken it after one year of experience with the tool. As soon as I became confident of my knowledge and when I was able to take some time to study, I did the exam. Yet, I have colleagues that have successfully taken it after one month of contact with the tool (they did had knowledge on other marketing automation platforms).

Bottom line, it is pretty much up to you when to take this exam. But, if just like me, you hate when people give you these vague answers. I’ll suggest you consider this quick checklist (based on the Salesforce one) when analyzing whether you’re ready or not:

• I’m familiar with the overall Pardot capabilities
• And I understand the lead funnel lifecycle, in particular how the path from visitors to prospects works
• I know how to create and use Pardot marketing assets, automation, and workflows
• Reading and analysing metrics from Engagement History and standard dashboards in B2B Marketing Analytics is simple for me
• I can manage administrative settings such as configuring scoring and grading models, configuring custom fields in Pardot, and using the Recycle Bin
• Solving basic Pardot issues, such as sync errors, field mapping, or supported objects are my thing

Almost there… How much will it cost me though?

So, exams for administrators, app builders, developers, marketers, consultants, Pardot experts (in which the Salesforce Pardot Specialist Certified is included), and CPQ specialists are rather affordable. They are all priced at $200 on the first attempt and retakes will cost $100.

P.S.: Don’t you dare worrying about re-takings! My study tips will make sure you pass this certification right at the first time.

Ready? Let’s schedule your exam!

If you feel like you are ready for scheduling your certification, congrats, bring it on! You can easily do it here: https://www.webassessor.com/salesforce! Break a leg!

And if you still feel you need to study a bit more for this exam, that’s why I am here writing this article for you: to tell you all about my personal experience of getting ready for it!

Exam content, tips, and tricks

The part in which you are truly interested

Exam Study Guide

As you may already be expecting, the way to start preparing for your certification is checking the official Salesforce Exam Study Guide. Here, you’ll find a lot of precious information about your exam! When I first opened this guide, what I really paid attention to was the “About the Exam” Section, in which you’ll find out or just validate that:

• The exam consists of 60 multiple-choice/multiple-select questions and up to 5 unscored questions
• The exam has a duration of 90 minutes
• You’ll have to go to a testing center or be in an online proctored environment to take your exam. I have taken my test at a testing center, and it was rather practical and even comfortable: they even offered me coffee and Kit-Kats, so I really can’t complain. Yet, you can always explore the other option if you feel like it!
• Here’s what you want to know: yes, you’ll need at least 72% of correct answers. A few months ago, Salesforce updated the passing score from 67% to 72% to level the bar up! No need for panicking, you’ll still nail this exam!

Exam Outline

Still, on the exam guide, I paid great attention to the exam outline, this is, the topics to be covered in the exam. Here are the six areas your evaluation on Pardot will be based on and how much weight each one was given:

1. Visitors and Prospects: 8%
   • Describe the relationship between visitors and prospects.
   • Given a scenario, apply the appropriate plan of action using Prospect Audits.
2. Administration: 11%
   • Illustrate how to create, edit, and map fields.
   • Explain the relationship between Pardot and Salesforce.
   • Describe the capabilities of the Pardot Recycle Bin.
3. Pardot Forms, Form Handlers and Landing Pages: 20%
   • Given a scenario, identify the capabilities, use cases, and interpret metrics of Pardot forms.
   • Identify the capabilities, use cases, and interpret reporting metrics for landing pages.
4. Lead Management: 24%
   • Explain the components and use cases of an automation rule.
   • Distinguish between the capabilities of, use cases for, and how to create different types of lists.
   • Define the capabilities of a completion action.
   • Explain the capabilities of a segmentation rule.
   • Define the capabilities of page actions.
   • Explain what a Score measures and how scoring is managed.
   • Explain what a Grade measures and how grading is managed.
   • Identify the capabilities and use cases of custom redirects.
5. Email Marketing: 20%
   • Distinguish between an Email and an Email Template.
   • Given a scenario, identify the capabilities and use cases for email.
   • Distinguish between the metrics collected in Pardot email reporting.
6. Engagement Studio: 17%
   • Distinguish between the components of an engagement program.
   • Explain the process of updating an engagement program including its assets.

Source: Salesforce Pardot Specialist Exam Guide

Do you see those bullet points by Salesforce, under the general topics and their corresponding weights? They will be the key and the basis of your theoretical study for the certification.

In other words, this will be your first studying material (spoiler alert for the next point of this article). In fact, since no one actually wants to read all the Salesforce Help, (let’s face it, it’s gigantic!), what you can do instead is searching in help about each of those bullet points up there and making summaries and notes about them. I have made them myself, and it didn’t take me more than 16 pages to have the exam info fully summed up into bullet points. If you want to, I can share with you my notes!

Just leave a comment on this article with your email address and an indication that you are asking for the exam notes. I’ll send them for free to your inbox if you are a Knowledge Center subscriber!

Materials to prepare for your certification

Salesforce Help

As I mentioned, the first study material you are given is the exam outline, which you must analyze carefully while exploring, using, and abusing Salesforce Help. Check the previous paragraph to know how you can make the most of the bullet points that compose the Pardot Specialist Exam Outline.

Trailmix by Salesforce Trailhead

After exploring the documentation available on Salesforce Help, complete the Trailmix “Prepare for your Pardot Specialist Credential” by Salesforce Trailhead. In it you will find a curated mix of specific modules that cover the 6 topics of the exam, quizzes and links so that you can learn in an interactive way. This tool is free and you can complete it at your own pace.

Quizlet

During my preparation for this certification, my best friend was undoubtedly Quizlet. I do advise you to take advantage of this great website, you can use for free!

Nonetheless, be careful, as sometimes the questions assigned as correct are not the correct ones. More often than we would like, Quizlet leads us to the wrong answer or just to an outdated answer. On the bright side, when you start spotting and correcting Quizlet incorrect answers, you have a good hint that you are already ready for that exam!

Udemy

Another great website I used for testing my Pardot knowledge before the certification was Udemy. Udemy offers two practice Pardot Specialist exams, both timed at 90 minutes, for 34,99€ (when in promotion it’s just 19,99€).

Since it is a bit expensive, you can always check if someone in your company or in your network has already bought the package. Ask for their permission to use it (which was my case)! As for the content of the exams, I must warn you that you will find some of the questions also on Quizlet, but many of them are unique. Besides, Udemy will present you more difficult questions than Quizlet, so level the bar up for you by answering these questions! If you had doubts about the answers you may always check the explanations given after you finish the exam, when you click on review answers.

Moreover, a great plus of Udemy, is the look and feel of the platform which is just like the exam, especially when you click on the full-screen mode and really take the test chronometer seriously.
In my opinion, I do not think Udemy is worth the almost 35€. At the end of the day, some of those questions you’ll find on Quizlet and you are only buying two exam samples. If you have the opportunity to share the cost with other colleagues who are also aiming at taking the Pardot Specialist Certification or if you have any discount coupon, then it just might be worth to buy it!

Free Developer Org

Finally, another excellent study asset that I did not have the time to explore as I would like is a free developer org given by Salesforce. However, you need to ask someone with a Pardot Consultant certification to get you a developer org, just like I did. If you can’t get one of these orgs, but you use Pardot in your company, you can always see the main functionalities of your marketing automation tool there. For that, please be extra careful not to edit anything for real – do not save your changes!

Those were the studying materials I used to prepare for my Salesforce Pardot Specialist Certification! I will share with you some final tips and tricks about this exam!

Tips and Tricks on Pardot Specialist Exam

Before you go, I’d like to tell you a tiny bit of what I felt during my exam. Firstly, I was a bit nervous and it took me twice the time to complete my test when compared to the preparation ones. In fact, when making my Udemy tests I was finishing the exam in 40 minutes maximum. On the day of my certification, I only had left 3 minutes when I actually hit the “submit exam” button. So, pay attention to timings when preparing for the exam.

If this is not you’re first Salesforce Certification, I bet you are used to this: wordy and tricky questions by Salesforce. When preparing for my exam, it happens quite a lot to me to be caught on tricky questions, especially when it came to Pardot automation rules and lists, and reporting questions! Keeping this in mind, during my evaluation moment I was super focused and paying extra attention to these dangerous traps. I advise you to do the same!

My final tip is for you to make sure that you are aware of the Salesforce release notes, regarding new features for Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (Pardot), so that you are up to date with the last changes.

Celebrate your pass!

Since I have no doubt you are going to pass successfully, at the first time, I just want to congratulate you on your new Salesforce Badge! Share it on your social media platforms and embedded it right away in your CV! After all, it is going to boost immensely your professional resumé! Don’t forget to cheer this achievement with the ones you love!

Maintain your Certification

Now that you have it, take care of it. Maintain your Salesforce Certification by always completing the Pardot Specialist certification maintenance modules on Trailhead. It’s great to keep you up to date of the new features, and is in fact a small price to pay not to let that hard-earned credential expire!

Well, have I mentioned it before? Go ahead and celebrate your success, you Pardot Specialist!

I hope this article helps you to totally nail that Pardot Specialist Exam! After passing it successfully, please let us know what you thought about the exam in our comments section!

If you are interested in exploring more about Pardot, especially while studying for your certification, go to our Knowledge Center Pardot Section!

If you found this article useful and know any friend who is also preparing for this certification, share this article!

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