Paycor is a platform built to help leaders recruit, manage and develop high-performing teams through technology that supports everything from payroll to performance management. The SaaS brand needed to scale their primary indicators of pipeline growth, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and first-time appointments with sales reps (FTAs), but already had a mature digital program in place. With their existing digital strategy reaching a plateau, Paycor challenged Monks to unlock new avenues for scalable growth.

Standard display tactics on the Google Display Network had been relatively effective for the brand; engagement was strong and the campaigns helped maintain visibility with remarketing audiences, but cost-per-click (CPC) was relatively high. To really scale, we turned to AI. Unlike traditional display tactics, Google’s Demand Generation product could learn, adapt and scale outcomes faster if given the right inputs.

Our team designed a two-part Demand Gen strategy tailored to Paycor’s goals. We started by running prospecting campaigns focused on competitor audiences to attract new, high-potential users. Then we layered in remarketing to re-engage users who had already shown interest but hadn’t yet converted. Both campaigns used a mix of static imagery and messaging pulled from top-performing Search ads, but video quickly became a standout performer.

We tested a range of video formats, from 30-second feature clips to five-minute product tours. The long-form videos drove the highest engagement and view-through rates, helping build interest and familiarity with Paycor's offering. The shorter videos were stronger at driving direct conversions. This combination formed an integrated creative system that guided users from awareness to action within the same campaign environment.

To build early traction, we launched with a Max Clicks bidding strategy to give Google room to gather data and optimize delivery. Once the campaigns were capturing enough engagement volume to shift out of the algorithmic learning phase, we shifted to Maximum Conversion Value to align spend with deeper-funnel results. We also implemented a tailored value-based bidding structure that reflected Paycor’s business goals. To align with these goals, we dynamically weighted MQLs based on company size and historical close-rate trends. FTAs and Opportunity Created conversions were given higher, fixed values to reinforce the quality of those users, while early-stage leads were excluded to sharpen the algorithm’s focus on revenue-ready prospects.

When we looked at performance side by side, the difference between the Demand Gen and traditional GDN campaigns was immediately clear: we saw a 2x increase in average lead value, a 90% increase in appointments, and a 20% improvement in cost per opportunity. These improvements reflect the stronger intent and relevance of the audiences we reached through AI-powered targeting and a dynamic value-based bidding structure that mapped directly to Paycor's business priorities. By focusing on signals that aligned with revenue potential, we quickly outperformed legacy display tactics and validated Demand Gen campaigns as a scalable approach to drive pipeline for Paycor.

Paylocity, a leading HCM SaaS built to make work simpler, has been working with Monks since 2023. Since Paylocity serves brands from 35-person SMBs to teams of 25k employees, the value of each lead and time to sale varies greatly. They struggled to connect leads to their eventual business value, making it difficult to optimize campaigns for high-quality conversions.  This hindered their ability to measure Google Ads’ revenue impact and confidently drive leads in every buyer segment without sacrificing quality. Paylocity partnered with Monks to solve this challenge and unlock the full value of their ad spend.

To help Paylocity bridge the gap between the initial click and the business outcome they’re accountable to (first-time appointments with sales, FTAs), we helped upgrade the data integration with their CRM. Our team drove the strategic planning and technical implementation, using Enhanced Conversions for leads and Google Data Manager. This increased the number of match keys used (specifically Google click IDs or “GCLIDs,” email addresses, and phone numbers) and resolved data-formatting issues. These improvements made it possible to differentiate a high-quality lead from a low-quality one within the ads platform and lean into value-based bidding (VBB), bidding directly against SQLs to achieve more FTAs.

The improved data connections allowed Paylocity to recognize a greater proportion of its sales-qualified conversions in Google Ads. The brand saw a 62% lift in conversion value of leads from Google Ads, a 61% higher conversion rate from marketing qualified lead (MQL) to sales qualified lead (SQL), and a 19% gain in first-time appointments (FTA). For the first time, the brand could make better decisions about scaling ad spend, confident that a higher lead cost would drive more business value. This critical insight gave Paylocity a more complete picture of the funnel than they could get from other media investments.

As black-box algorithmic campaigns take over digital platforms, creative is the most critical lever to fuel new performance gains. The modern digital landscape requires all ad creative to be quantifiable, tested at scale, audience-specific and channel-native. To deliver on this, our performance creative experts work hand-in-hand with media strategists and AI technology to rapidly produce and optimize new assets according to your business goals. Our solutions combine agile development, iterative testing, generative AI, and human ingenuity to deliver the most effective and relevant message to your target audience and unlock efficient growth for your brand.

Text-to-image technology gets our creative in market faster, unlocking multiple benefits in the creative process. In addition to cutting down time spent on concepting and approvals with AI-generated mockups, the technology also speeds up QA with automated content checks based on your brand guidelines, testing taxonomy, and ad platform requirements.

Even the biggest brands have challenges maintaining fresh asset libraries, with long timelines and high cost to shoot new content. Generative AI allows us to get scrappy with existing content and create modularity. From new backgrounds to alternating models, localization to platform-native aspect ratios, the opportunities are endless.

Our performance creative experts are embedded with our media strategists to put data-driven testing at the beginning of the development process, rather than retrofitting tests onto existing brand work. We start with custom learning agendas based on historical performance and your business goals, then bake in our testing dimensions to the creative concepts themselves, from visuals to value props to tone and more. We generate a tailored ad taxonomy to analyze results in aggregate, then fuel iteration quickly. Every decision is data-driven, while keeping your brand’s voice center stage.

Our creative strategists form an agile bridge between your brand designers and your advertising experts, whether in-house or outsourced. Your creative team benefits from extended capacity, combined with deep knowledge of performance media best practices, while your media marketers can ramp up their testing velocity without sacrificing quality or learnings. ROI is our north star as we adapt your brand concepts and traditional media assets into bespoke digital iterations for each stage of the funnel and each ad placement. We are equally fluent in “art director,” “media buyer,” and “data analyst”—our cross-functional expertise seamlessly integrates us into your team to benefit your bottom line.

Five9 is the industry leading provider of cloud call center software. With over 2,000 customers worldwide and over 3 billion customer calls processed, Five9 helps contact centers of all sizes create powerful customer connections. But even with this success, Five9 still faced a growth challenge: the wanted to reach executives, decision makers and influencers whose roles intersect with business and technology—a notoriously competitive target market. We partnered with Five9 to optimize the quality of demand generation across the entire customer journey, from stoking interest early on to capturing and closing deals further down the funnel. Our key KPIs included increasing call duration (an indicator of quality) and improving overall sales.

We began by ensuring that users we were targeting across Five9’s digital funnel accurately reflected the brand’s target profile. Through customer base analysis with historical data, we were able to isolate the demographic, behavioral and interest segments that best indicate a potential customer. From that historical customer understanding, we crafted curated display targeting combinations to isolate highly relevant users. The targeting types we leveraged included similar audiences, placements, topic categories, in-market audiences, demographic overlays, and device modifiers. To see any Five9 display ad, a user had to check several boxes of relevancy.

Identifying prospects is only one piece of the puzzle; how to best support them throughout the journey is another. Five9 services enterprise, commercial and small/medium business customers, all of which have specific needs and pain points. We implemented a customer segment strategy that included call tracking, ad testing, and targeting expansion to maximize the customization for each customer journey.

To fully understand the quality of the leads driven by search engine marketing (SEM), we monitored Five9’s Salesforce CRM database to track three intermediate steps from SEM conversion to closed deal. With this data, we were able to evaluate, isolate and expand on sources of enterprise leads.

To be relevant is to be social. As a social AOR, we create social playgrounds as the go-to destination for brands’ audiences, generating meaningful content with a sharp editorial point of view. We focus on being part of the real and authentic everyday conversations that define the social role of brands today. By providing tools that brands need to foster authentic, meaningful conversations and communities, we help them not only keep up with the accelerating pace of culture, but truly lead within it.

As a fast-growing wellness and health brand, Hatch has won the hearts of countless people whose sleeping habits were drastically improved by its Restore smart sleep assistant. But given the need for a constant flow of fit-for-format content, Hatch sought a way to produce and deliver relevant experiences to audiences without losing sleep. Leveraging our insights in creative performance, we partnered with Hatch to help accelerate their creative output and keep up with the growing demand for channel-native content.

Working hand in hand with the brand to feed on each other’s subject expertise, we identified areas of improvement within two main platforms, YouTube and Facebook, as well as other social channels. For YouTube, we developed a series of high-performing 15-second videos powered by fit-for-format imagery, cadence and narrative arcs to tell a deeper story of Hatch Restore, and drive more users to the website. Studying the feedback data and iterating at speed, we ran a series of tests to identify and double down on those who showed the best performance, leading to a 220% increase in click-through rate.

We incorporated animated aspects that drew everyone’s eye and got consumers viewing, swiping and buying. In doing so, we identified that the creatives with the heaviest animation generated a stronger conversion rate, and iterated quickly to improve the CPA. In perfect balance, we brought an out-of-the-box approach to creative production while ensuring the content felt authentic to Hatch’s identity. And above all, we eased the rising pressure on the creative team to deliver at speed. Now packed with learnings to inform future efforts, Hatch can meet larger audiences where they are, and scale their business through data-driven creativity.

Paycor, a leading Human Capital Management SaaS platform, needed to find a new growth path for both overall leads and small business users. But there was a challenge: while reaching SMB prospects on networks like LinkedIn is straightforward, search ads don't offer the same level of dependable audience data. Realizing that pricing is a key decision criteria for that market, we worked with Paycor to develop a plan to segment and increase SMB leads for search using pricing as the central offer—overall scaling growth for the market.

To serve personalized messaging to enterprise and SMB separately on search, we created Customer Match audiences by cross-referencing known audience data from Paycor's CRM with searchers who are already categorized and known to Google.

Segmentation was harder for unknown searchers. With the help of our Compass reporting suite, Paycor integrated their CRM data to analyze keyword groups based on historical CRM behavior, including where prospects were in the funnel when they converted and the size of the company. These insights allowed the teams to categorize search markets into groups and to personalize the customer journey on search ads and other channels, like paid social.

For the key SMB audience, the teams were able to reduce the number of clicks it took to find cost info at all stages, and added price-specific language to ad messaging for those closer to the purchasing decision. They also applied a funnel-specific call to action from ad copy to landing pages, increasing from three to 18 messaging and landing page combinations.

This kind of specificity had not been possible before, and was the result of SEM data analysis driven by Compass, aggregated client CRM data, and unique client-side customer research insights that gave the teams what was needed to personalize the customer journey. The updated approach to messaging for both known and extrapolated audiences led to surprisingly large gains in ad engagement and enabled even more growth in new business opportunities for Paycor.