On the 19th of March 2021, I took my Salesforce Marketing Cloud Administrator exam. Although I didn’t pass, I learnt a lot from the process, and I now feel more prepared going into my next exam. In this blog, I am going to explain my first approach towards the exam, what I took out of it and how I am going to approach it differently going into my next attempt.
Approaching the first exam I had to find out the best way to revise because it had been a while since I had sat down to take an exam. I decided to look at the different styles of learning to figure out which type I was. I eventually concluded that I was both a visual and kinaesthetic learner, so this meant that I had to combine a hands-on approach and visual aids such as a video course. This is where Udemy came into play as it offered a wide variety of video courses, I found a couple of courses that would help me prepare for the Marketing Cloud Administration exam, and I had to look at the reviews to make sure it was tried and tested.
I ended up choosing the “Salesforce Marketing Cloud Administrator Certification” course, it had a clear contents table broken down by each section that would be covered in the exam. As I had already completed the Marketing Admin Trailhead, I decided to primarily focus on this course as my main guide to see how good it was. What I found useful was the videos were very well made, and the course creator made sure to include an overview that summarised the most important aspects of each area.
Following the course on Udemy was relatively straightforward and I made sure to make notes that I could refer to after I finished each section. One thing I found very useful was creating mnemonic devices which is just a way of creating acronyms to help remember useful information. For example, to remember the role of a marketing admin where I created the mnemonic acronym “M.A.C” which stands for “Managing channels, apps and other tools, assigning roles to users, and creating users”. Using tricks like this helped make the revision a lot more palatable as I was different techniques to convey the same information.
Another area that I used to revise for the exam was Salesforce platform, Trailhead. It contains modules and topics regarding the products and services Salesforce offers. One thing I love about Trailhead is that at the end of each topic there are quiz questions, which help reinforce everything that was covered.
A week before the exam I plateaued because I had other projects that required my full attention and input, although I made great progress and learnt a lot from the projects I was involved in, I feel like I should’ve set aside more time for revision as it was the penultimate week before my exam. However, I know this all a learning process and I will make sure not to repeat the same mistake.
Taking the exam was straightforward but a bit nerve-racking. Something to take away for the next exam would be to make sure I feel relaxed before taking it and to take my time with it.
At the end of the exam, I was able to get a clear understanding of the areas I need to work on, and this will help me when I am creating my revision guide for my next attempt. Overall, I felt like I could’ve done better because I expect a lot out of myself, but I am learning a lot out of this experience which I am very glad for.
Sam, CloudSmart™️
