Overview

Marketing professionals looking to showcase their skills and expertise in various Marketing Technology platforms surely have come across the range of certifications available for Adobe Marketo Engage. With a massive community dedicated to sharing knowledge, years worth of online forums detailing exam experiences and tips for preparing, it may be tough to understand how to get started and where to find the most relevant information. Read on to learn what the Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Expert Certification is and how it can add major (even monetary) value to your career, who the exam is best suited for, when you should consider taking it and how to prepare.

What is the Marketo Engage Business Practitioner exam?

The Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner exam is a timed, multichoice test consisting of 50 questions that span six core areas of Adobe Marketo Engage. The intention of this exam is to designate technical expertise to marketing professionals who can successfully demonstrate a proficiency within those core areas, including:

• System Administration and Maintenance
• Marketing Activities and Campaign Management
• Lead Management
• Data Management
• Reporting
• System Best Practices

The exam may be taken online, in a proctored format, or at a local testing center. The passing mark for the exam is 35 out 50 correct responses, and is associated with a slight price tag which as of March 2023 hangs around: $225 USD or $150 for professionals working from India. Adobe Partners receive a 33% discount on exam prices, so if you’re a professional working for a company who is currently an Adobe partner, chat internally to find out how to take advantage of this offer.

In comparison to the former, Marketo Engaged Expert exam, the new exam contains less questions and more time, but this is because the questions are designed to be more challenging. Here are three helpful tips to keep in mind as you prepare for the exam:

• The previous exam was heavily focused on features that were well documented. You could easily find the answer in Marketo Product Docs, but that approach will not be as useful for this new exam.
• As mentioned, the exam contains multiple choice answers that have been carefully crafted. Be sure to pay close attention and try to understand the differences between each multiple choice option. Fun tip – with only three to four multiple choice answers at a time, using exclusionary techniques can be an efficient way to decipher the correct answer!
• There very likely will be questions on the exam that cover functionality you have not had the opportunity to work with. Leverage the Adobe Certification Exam Prep Portal to learn how to access the practice test and take the practice exam to uncover which areas you’ll need to study further.

Why is it important to get certified?

Obtaining this certification will showcase to fellow peers, future and/or current employers that you have worked to obtain a proficiency in a basic skill set that you can continue to build upon. Having a marketing automation certification sets you apart from the pack due to the level of effort and expertise these exams require.

For folks looking to invest in their MOPs professional development through agency work, certifications may be a core requirement to be considered for a specific role, as agencies are highly incentivized to have employees with marketing automation certification. Marketing professionals working in-house may run into issues receiving administrative access to tools like Adobe Marketo Engage without a certification, and many companies prefer to hire professionals who are certified as it also validates the experience of a new hire to the rest of the organization.

Next to the opportunities and access this certification can provide, it can also make a huge difference in salary, especially for those working through entry-level positions. As a professional starts to grow into higher, leadership level positions, this type of certification may not hold the same value, so investing in professional development early on can make a strategic difference in your salary as your career grows. (Source)

When should you take the exam?

While all marketing professionals are encouraged to take the business practitioner exam, Adobe encourages professionals to spend at least 18 months working with Adobe Marketo Engage working to build, launch and analyze campaigns, operationalize demand generation, and worked to understand the underlying technologies such as HTML, integrations, databases and CRM. Those best suited to take this exam are familiar or have experience with tools and technology such as: Excel file formats, API concepts, CRM basics, familiarity with social media platforms, Microsoft Office and HTML, at minimum.

How can you prepare to take the exam?

The best way to get started is by gauging your current familiarity with the platform by taking the Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Readiness Questionnaire. This questionnaire will help you determine what percentage of your current experience and knowledge covers the minimum experience and knowledge defined for the exam. All in all, it will help determine if you should spend more time working with different areas of the platform before proceeding with the exam.

Once you’re feeling familiar with Adobe Marketo Engage, attempt to take the practice exam. This test will contain questions that are the same level of the final exam, so it is a great opportunity to uncover which areas you will need to study further and which areas you’re already familiar with. To access the practice exam, you’ll need to login to Adobe Credential Management. Read this Adobe Certification Exam Prep Portal for a step-by-step guide on how to create an account and access the practice exam.

The exam objectives and scope consists of following (Source):

Section 1: Administration and Maintenance (12%)

• Determine mapping process between Marketo and CRM
• Identify what happened to an asset using the Audit Trail
• Recognize differences between users and roles
• Given a scenario, identify the best fit for using workspace and partitions
• Identify CRM platforms with native Marketo synchronization
• Given a scenario, locate where information is referenced

Section 2: Marketing Activities/Campaign Management (46%)

• Demonstrate an understanding of Smart Campaigns, logic, constraints and flow steps
• Given a scenario, define the next step
• Identify the root cause of a problem
• Interpret the relationship between programs, channels, tags and period cost
• Demonstrate/apply the correct configuration to Engagement Programs
• Give examples of usage for different types of tokens
• Summarize the utility of Webhooks in Marketo and how they are used
• Identify and apply the appropriate use of the PMCF
• Explain the benefits of Global Assets and how to use them
• Demonstrate the capabilities of forms
• Perform and analyze an A/B test strategy
• Identify where a program or asset has been referenced with ‘Used By’
• Troubleshoot communication limits
• Use Webinar provider information in an event program

Section 3: Lead Management (12%)

• Outline the key decision points in defining the lifecycle model
• Apply best practices around lead scoring
• Implement the appropriate interesting moments
• Interpret the lead activity log
• Given a scenario, identify the creation source

Section 4: Data Management (10%)

• Demonstrate how to set up a data management program
• Analyze an instance’s data quality
• Identify a few key pieces of Marketo’s data retention policy as it relates to smart lists
• Summarize how segmentation works

Section 5: Reporting (4%)

• Given an outcome of a campaign, determine how to set up a program to provide the best reporting
• Given a scenario, be able to investigate and assign the appropriate acquisition program

Section 6: Best Practices (16%)

• Demonstrate the relevance of lead scoring in marketing and sales collaboration
• Illustrate the benefits of the folder structure and naming conventions
• Apply best practices around A/B testing
• Explain the process to perform a quality check on any Marketo program
• Explain the process to perform a quality check on an email

There is no limit to the number of times you can take the practice exam, so depending on how you best retain and learn new information, you may find value revisiting the practice exam after additional studying. Etumos highly encourages all interested in obtaining this certification to check out the new practice exam platform from Adobe, as it contains visual guides that help quickly identify how you’re scoring on various areas of the exam while also providing links to Marketo documentation that will help increase your understanding of a specific topic. Once you’re feeling confident and ready for the final exam, head back into the Adobe Credential Management to schedule your in-person or online, proctored exam.

Who should take the exam?

As mentioned above, any professional looking to further develop their marketing automation expertise would be a great candidate for the Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Exam. Managers, specialists, experts or analysts across the following domains tend to find the most value from obtaining a Adobe Business Practitioner Expert certification:

Marketing operations
Revenue operations
Growth operations
Demand generation
Digital marketing
Email marketing
Martech architecting

Conclusion

The Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner exam is a timed, multichoice test that spans six core areas of Adobe Marketo Engage. Obtaining this certification will showcase to fellow peers, future and/or current employers that you have worked to obtain a proficiency in a basic skill set that you can continue to build upon. Having a marketing automation certification sets you apart from the pack due to the level of effort and expertise these exams require. Depending on your professional development goals, a marketing automation certification may be required to be considered for an agency-based role and it may also be required to simply obtain access to the technology you will need to work with for a specific brand. Investing in marketing automation certification early on in your career may also yield more benefits for salary growth then waiting until you’ve obtained leadership or managerial positions.

To get started with the Adobe Marketo Engage Business Practitioner Exam, marketing and revenue ops, demand generation, digital and/or email marketing professionals should work to gain at least 18 months experience with the platform, visit and take the readiness questionnaire, take the online practice exam (multiple times, if useful) review Marketo’s product documentation, alongside the exam’s objectives and scope to be as prepared as possible to pass the exam.

Oh, and once you do finally obtain this certification, do not forget to celebrate your accomplishments! Add the certification badge to your professional web assets, shout yourself out, and give yourself a pat on the back. This exam is meant to be challenging, and those who are able to pass it successfully should be proud of the skills set they’ve worked to obtain.