Passing the Pardot Certified Consulting Exam

The Certified Pardot Consultant exam is designed to test individuals and consultants alike on implementing Pardot solutions for their organization or clients. The exam tests both technical aptitude with respect to Pardot toolsets as well as knowledge of marketing automation in general.

Resources Available

A great place to start is the Certification homepage for the Pardot exam. The outline of what the certification is all about is listed on this page, the steps that you’ll need to take to prepare are listed at a high level, and there are plenty of links to other resources. Most of these resources will be linked to in this post to keep things tidy.

First thing you should know about the resources available to you is that a Pardot instance is not one of them. You’ll have to go about taking this exam without the use of a developer playground or sandbox unless your organization already has made the decision to purchase Pardot or has already implemented it.

There is a handy study guide provided by Salesforce that can be used to gauge areas where the test will be focused. I used this study guide just as it is intended, as a high level guide. What really worked for me as resources were two main things - the online courses that are available in help and training if you search for Pardot and the Pardot knowledge base.

I suggest going through all of the video tutorials in the help and training section and then fill in gaps in knowledge using the knowledge base. When I say fill in gaps I really mean read the entire thing, seriously. The guided tutorials will help you see the tool and feel what it is like to click around but all the answers to the test are within the text in the knowledge base. It is absolutely critical to read through the knowledge base. In case you could not tell, I am stressing the point that the online tutorials are not enough to pass the test alone.

Here is a list of all the video tutorials and how long they are, typically they are a little shorter than the actual length that they are recorded. I suggest paying particular attention to the Salesforce integration, Google integration, and the Technical Setup sections and follow-up on those with reading through the knowledge base.

The Test Itself

The exam is a 60 question multiple choice test. It is true multiple choice as opposed to a lot of Salesforce certification exams which are pick 3 out of 5 or choose the best 2 answers; there is only 1 correct answer to each question. You get 90 minutes to complete the exam which I found was more than enough time and the passing score is 70%. Like all certification exams you don’t know exactly how well you have done, you just get a pass or fail at the end.

Once you pass the test you are required to maintain this certification. Just like Salesforce Administrator and Developer certifications you will need to take a test every release to keep up with the times. Make sure to read over the study materials provided for each release and you should be just fine maintaining your certification.

Please feel free to comment below, on the Salesforce Success Community, on our Facebook page, or directly at me on Twitter @JustEdelstein.