Running marketing operations at the enterprise level is not easy and it’s like conducting an orchestra with a thousand instruments - all playing from slightly different sheets of music. As teams scale across regions, brands, and systems, operational complexity becomes the biggest barrier to efficiency and impact.
Here are the hardest parts of enterprise marketing operations today - and how Marketing Cloud changes the game.
Data Integration & Quality
One of the main challenges is that enterprise data lives everywhere - in CRM, ERP, analytics, ad platforms, and event tools. Each team manages a different slice, often with its own rules and definitions (“what’s a lead?” can vary by region or product line). It’s hard because syncing and cleansing data across these systems is time-consuming, error-prone, and often incomplete. Campaigns suffer when audience data isn’t unified, leading to poor personalization and wasted spend.
Cross-Platform Campaign Execution
A second challenge is cross-platform campaign execution. Enterprises rely on dozens of tools - from Salesforce and LinkedIn to web personalization engines. Orchestrating consistent, connected experiences across them is daunting. This is difficult because no single system owns the full customer journey. APIs help, but manual coordination remains the norm, slowing campaign velocity and creating silos.
Governance & Compliance
Another significant challenge is governance and compliance. With hundreds (or thousands) of users across global teams, enforcing consistent permissions, branding, and compliance is complex. It’s hard because different skill levels and systems increase the risk of data breaches, non-compliance, or inconsistent messaging.
Change Management & Adoption
Change management and adoption presents yet another challenge. Rolling out new tools or processes in large organizations often meets resistance. This is difficult because legacy systems, siloed ownership, and “we’ve always done it this way” mentalities lead to underused technology and manual workarounds.
How Marketing Cloud Solves These Challenges
Marketing Cloud represents Salesforce’s new approach to modern, connected marketing operations - built for scale, speed, and intelligence. Here’s how it addresses each challenge:
1. Unified Data with Data 36O(Data Cloud)
Marketing Cloud integrates natively with Salesforce Data 36O, enabling a single source of truth for all customer data; real-time, unified, and governed. No more fragmented audiences or conflicting records.
2. Campaign Flows for Seamless Orchestration
With Campaign Flows, marketers can design, automate, and manage connected experiences across email, mobile, web, ads, and CRM - all from one unified canvas. Campaign Flows replace legacy Journey Builder with a faster, API-friendly, and scalable framework built for cross-channel orchestration.
3. Smarter Attribution with Marketing Intelligence
Marketing Cloud integrates with Marketing Intelligence for advanced analytics and multi-touch attribution. By connecting marketing and sales data, teams can measure true ROI, pipeline impact, and customer lifetime value - all inside Salesforce.
4. Multi-Brand Governance with Business Units (Coming Next)
Upcoming support for Business Units will enable enterprises to manage multiple brands, regions, or departments within one instance - with distinct data models, permissions, and governance policies. This will give global organizations centralized control while empowering local teams to operate independently.
5. Centralized Cost Visibility with Consumption Credits
Marketing Cloud introduces a consumption-based model, giving teams transparency into usage and spend across all channels. Enterprises can monitor credit consumption across business units, campaigns, or regions - enabling smarter budgeting, forecasting, and ROI tracking.
6. Simplified Stack, Lower Costs
By consolidating automation, segmentation, analytics, and personalization into one connected platform, MCN reduces tech sprawl and integration overhead - helping marketing operations teams do more with less.
The Bottom Line
Enterprise marketing operations will always be complex - but they don’t have to be chaotic. Marketing Cloud brings order to complexity by connecting data, simplifying execution, and empowering teams with intelligence and governance.
For large organizations, it’s not just a new version of Marketing Cloud - it’s a smarter, more connected way to run marketing at scale.
Interested in getting help with Marketing Cloud? If your company is looking to streamline your marketing operations or implement Marketing Cloud solutions, we’re here to help. Reach out to us to discuss how we can support your enterprise marketing needs.