885 Google Ads conversions and 24% organic growth — across one integrated engine.
Happy HR had the product — a cloud-based HR platform built for Australian compliance, serving SMEs through to enterprise. What they didn't have was a performance engine behind it. Google Ads tracking was broken, Meta was running without proper pixel events, and key commercial pages (Enterprise HR, Payroll) were underperforming organically. The opportunity was to fix the plumbing, then scale spend with confidence.
When prior agencies leave the conversion tracking half-built, every dollar you spend is flying blind. We rebuilt the foundations first.
Happy HR is an Australian cloud-based HR software platform covering onboarding, performance, payroll and compliance. Built for local regulation, serving HR managers and business owners from SME through to enterprise.
Organic rankings for high-intent terms were present but capped out. Google Ads conversion tracking was misconfigured — so spend optimisation was guesswork. Meta campaigns had no audience structure and no reliable pixel events. Core commercial pages were leaving money on the table.
Three-channel performance engine: SEO to own "hr software australia" long-term, Google Ads rebuilt from conversion tracking up with Performance Max + Search + 100+ negatives, and Meta structured across retargeting, lead magnet and traffic campaigns.
Retargeting for warm audiences, a lead magnet for top-of-funnel capture, and a traffic campaign for brand awareness. One pixel, configured properly from day one.
Creative laddered to each funnel stage — compliance-themed concepts for cold and warm audiences ("New year. New HR regulations" · "Are your HR contracts ready for 2026?"), a downloadable lead magnet for top-of-funnel capture ("10 Mistakes That Make Good Employees Leave"), and product-led dashboard visuals for retargeting warm traffic back to the demo.
Copy leaned into cost pain and support quality — "Current HR software costing you too much?" and "Sure, you've got HR support… but why settle for ok?" Tested across image and video creative. Low impression flags on certain variants prompted creative rotation to keep spend fresh.
Conversion tracking fixed end-to-end. Performance Max for coverage, Search for high-intent demand capture, 100+ negatives to protect spend quality.
Every campaign funnelled to the Happy HR product page — "HR software done in minutes, not hours. Try it free for 30 days." Two primary CTAs: Book a Demo and Make an Enquiry. Built to capture high-intent HR manager and business owner search.
Performance Max carried the volume; a targeted Search campaign captured the high-intent queries. 100+ negative keywords filtered out irrelevant job-seeker traffic, protecting spend for real buyers. Result: 885 conversions across 22,827 clicks in 2025.
Priorities were the commercial terms that actually move revenue — "hr software australia", "online hr software", "cloud-based HR software" — not the easy-win long-tail.
Comprehensive technical + content audit first. Rewrote navigation and on-page content to match what HR buyers actually search for. Launched a sustained blog programme to build topical authority over compliance, payroll, and people ops.
"online hr software" → Position 2. "hr software australia" → Position 5. Organic users up 24% (Jan vs Dec). Total keywords ranking: 2,162. Organic revenue growth followed.
Paid delivered immediate conversion volume. Organic built the long-term compounding asset. Tracking finally told the truth.
"If the tracking's broken, everything downstream is theatre."
Most SaaS accounts we inherit have one thing in common — the conversion tracking doesn't match reality. Fix that first, and Performance Max actually performs. Skip it, and you're optimising against ghost data. Happy HR's 885 conversions only happened because we rebuilt the plumbing before we scaled the spend.
30-minute audit + strategy call. You'll leave with a custom roadmap — whether we work together or not. No pitch deck, no pressure.
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