Marketo is the Pro’s Choice (HubSpot is the People’s Choice)

Yesterday it was announced that Adobe would be acquiring marketing automation program (MAP) Marketo for $5 billion. Marketing technology leaders recognize Marketo as the most advanced MAP.

I recently redid my 2014 study of the adoption of digital marketing by 351 B2B companies with roughly 50-1000 employees. This is the heart of the U.S. economy, with hundreds of thousands of companies employing more than three times as many people as enterprises that have 1000+ employees.

When it comes to marketing automation, 74% of the software companies now have a MAP in place, while only 24% of the non-software companies do (companies in such industries as manufacturing, medical devices, and professional services).

And there is a clear distinction between which MAP they preferred. Other software companies (including many marketing software companies) have a growing preference for Marketo. In 2014 the usage among software companies was:

Marketo 39%
Eloqua 25%
HubSpot 29%
Pardot 17%

While the overall usage rate of marketing automation has changed little, the preference for Marketo among other software companies in 2018 is now much stronger:

Marketo 61%
Eloqua 16%
HubSpot 14%
Pardot 9%

For the far more numerous non-software companies, HubSpot is the clear favorite. Their rate of MAP adoption has risen only slightly to 24% in 2018 and the top vendors are:

HubSpot 63%
Marketo 16%
Pardot 14%
Act-On 8%

This reflects a very different approach to marketing and marketing technology between the 85 software companies in my original study and the 266 non-software companies. In 2014 the software companies were using a median of 7 of the 9 digital marketing programs, while the non-software companies were using a median of only 2 of the 9 (and they got one point just for having Google Analytics on their website, whether or not they ever even looked at it). This has changed little in the last four years.

The study also showed the effect on revenue of modern marketing programs. The software companies using 8 or 9 of the programs (such as Google Analytics, marketing automation, search advertising, and social media) were growing almost five times faster than the software companies using 0-3 of the programs; if you’re not using digital marketing today you’re not really marketing.