How to Become a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant

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Careers, Marketing, Microsoft Dynamics 365

How to Become a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant

Are you looking to shift your career? Are you interested in Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement Solutions? Read this blog post to learn more about becoming a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant.

Mary Claudine Garces

October 3, 2022

Introduction

Marketing can make or break a business. In this fast-paced, modern world, it is important for any business to have strong marketing strategies and tools to achieve and maintain success. Dynamics 365 for Marketing is one powerful tool that can help businesses carry out their marketing strategies and maintain positive engagements with customers, all while supporting the organization’s daily operations.

A Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant Associate plays a crucial role in helping businesses grow and accomplish their marketing goals by primarily leveraging on Dynamics 365 Marketing application. Whether you are a functional consultant who wants to focus in Dynamics 365 Marketing, or you are a marketing or IT professional who wants to shift your career into Microsoft Dynamics Customer Engagement Solutions, this post is for you.

In this post, we will cover:

What is Dynamics 365 for Marketing?
What is a Dynamics 365 marketing Functional Consultant?
What are the roles and responsibilities of a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant?
What are the skills and Microsoft Certifications needed to become a Functional Consultant for Dynamics 365 Marketing?

What Is Dynamics 365 for Marketing?

Dynamics 365 for Marketing is a cloud-based service that helps organizations manage their marketing strategy and goals more effectively. It is one of four applications under the Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CE) Solutions. The other three applications being Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, and Dynamics 365 Field Service.

The Dynamics 365 Marketing application consists of a variety of tools which aim to help organizations elevate customer experiences across different channels. This can include targeting the right audience for your business, engaging customers in real time, and creating great content using AI-powered analytics. The application also helps create personalized interactions for your customers that can build customer trust and loyalty, which is important for every successful business.

The Dynamics 365 for Marketing works in sync with other Customer Engagement applications. Built on Microsoft’s Power Platform, these CE applications can work independently, but are designed to work together to create a wholistic, cloud-based CRM system for the client.

You can think of Dynamics 365 Marketing as a full service for your marketing tasks. Apps and solutions can be customized to provide diverse functionality to support your marketing department as well as coordinate with sales with their customer relationship management. Examples of what you can do in the application are:

Create emails, forms, and online content
Leverage LinkedIn’s lead tools to target the right audience
Use automated, multi-channel campaigns to interact with your customers real-time
Create an end-to-end customer journey
Understand your leads better and know which leads to prioritize
Manage events
Track your marketing return on investment (MROI)
Securely share information across different teams
Gather customer feedback through the creation of actionable surveys

In addition to these, Dynamics 365 Marketing is customizable for your business’ specific needs. Customizations are available within the app itself, or through browsing third-party packages from Microsoft AppSource. Dynamics 365 CE can also be integrated with other systems in your organization, so it fits your corporate infrastructure smoothly.

What is a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant?

A Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant is someone who has deep knowledge in navigating and utilizing the Dynamics 365 Marketing application to help the business achieve its marketing goals. This means that you have a good background and experience in marketing and in applying its principles. As a functional consultant, you also help capture and translate requirements between the client and developers to implement solutions relevant to marketing.

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What are the roles and responsibilities of a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant?

The role of a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant is primarily to implement marketing strategies by leveraging Dynamics 365 Marketing solutions for the customer or the client. This means that you are collaborating with stakeholders in an organization to understand their business goals and come up with strategies to reach said goals.

In line with this, the responsibilities of a functional consultant for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Marketing may include:

Documenting and implementing business requirements on Dynamics 365 Marketing
Acting as an advisor on Marketing business cases
Designing customer journeys
Proposing comprehensive but cost-effective solutions, including configuring or customizing the Marketing app to tailor-fit the organization’s needs
Testing solutions by collaborating with other teams
Identifying and nurturing leads
Configuring Microsoft Power Platform to extend Dynamics 365 Marketing to connect with Power apps and third-party apps
Using Customer Voice surveys to get customer feedback
Managing data privacy and security

What are the skills needed to become a Functional Consultant for Dynamics 365 Marketing?

One will need a certain level of expertise, knowledge, and skillset to become a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant. That said, it can take several years to build experience as a functional consultant in the field. Industry experience in marketing, sales, customer service, and field service which are the four Customer Engagement (CE) applications is always helpful within the role.

Having a fundamental understanding of customer engagement and marketing principles, terminologies, methodologies, and best practices is also useful. Therefore, it is preferred to have someone with an academic background either in business, marketing, or another related field. An understanding of Dynamics 365 model-driven apps in Power Apps is also helpful, and one should know the role of Dynamics 365 for Marketing in relation to the wide suite of applications and integrations within the Dynamics 365 ecosystem.

Aside from the product and technical knowledge, the consulting role requires some soft skills for you to be able to work effectively with the client and across teams. Below are just some of the soft skills one can have as a marketing functional consultant:

Creative thinking skills – having the ability to analyze situations, such as customer and marketing requirements and coming up with out-of-the-box ideas for marketing
Communication skills – being able to present data clearly, building strong relationships with stakeholders across different channels, as well as effectively communicating value proposition
Collaboration – working together with different team members and with clients
Problem-solving skills – strong analytical and critical thinking can create effective business solutions and configurations for the client

Are there Microsoft Certifications required to become a Functional Consultant for Dynamics 365 Marketing?

There are corresponding certifications that you can earn for each of the customer engagement applications of Dynamics 365 (Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and Field Service). For Dynamics 365 Marketing app, you will need to take the Exam MB-220: Microsoft Dynamics Marketing Functional Consultant. Earning this Microsoft Certification proves that you have the required technical specialization for the position. Broadly speaking, these skills include attracting and converting leads, building brand awareness, using omnichannel messaging, and delivering marketing insights.

Another exam that is highly recommended for you to take is the Exam PL-200: Microsoft Power Platform Functional Consultant. Although this exam is no longer a requirement as announced by Microsoft recently, it is still highly recommended for you to pass it before taking Exam MB-220, because it assesses your Power Platform skills, which may be useful as a Marketing Functional Consultant.

Conclusion

There are indeed many rewarding careers within the Microsoft ecosystem, and one of them is the Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant. Becoming a Dynamics 365 Marketing Functional Consultant includes a wide range of technical skills, soft skills, and relevant industry experience. In addition, product knowledge of Dynamics 365 Marketing, other CRM applications and a familiarity with Microsoft Power Platform is needed.