Campaigns run around the clock unless told otherwise, and a click arriving when nobody can respond costs the same as one arriving during business hours while converting far worse. For a small budget, restricting hours concentrates spend where it can actually produce work.

Why the default is continuous

Platforms run advertisements at all hours because for many advertisers that is correct. An online retailer takes orders at three in the morning perfectly well.

A service business does not. An enquiry arriving overnight sits until morning, by which time the person has frequently contacted somebody who answered, or the urgency has passed.

That difference is not reflected in what you pay. The click costs the same, so the effect is entirely on the conversion side, which is where a small budget can least afford it.

Finding your actual hours

Not from guesswork. The data is in the account.

Most platforms report performance by hour of day and by day of week. Reading that for a period long enough to be meaningful, usually a few months, shows where the spend goes and where the conversions come from.

The pattern is frequently clearer than expected: a concentration during working hours, a secondary peak in the evening for planned work, and very little of value overnight.

Where there is not enough data to see a pattern, defaulting to the hours you answer is the safe starting position, since the argument for those hours does not depend on the data.

Three different situations

Nobody answers outside business hours

Restrict the schedule to those hours. This is the common case and the clearest decision.

The obvious objection is losing evening enquiries, which is answered by whether an evening form submission actually converts for you. Frequently it does, in which case evenings stay on and only overnight is cut.

Emergency work with genuine after-hours response

Run overnight, on emergency terms only, in a separate campaign. Mixing emergency and planned work in one schedule means one of them is always wrong.

Separating them also makes the results readable, since overnight emergency performance and daytime planned performance are different businesses.

Forms convert but calls do not

The middle case, and it argues for running longer with a different message. An evening advertisement pointing at a form with a stated callback time works where an advertisement inviting a call does not.

Adjustments rather than switching off

Most platforms allow reducing bids at certain times rather than stopping entirely.

That is the more nuanced tool. Where evenings convert at half the daytime rate, bidding lower rather than pausing keeps the enquiries you were getting while paying less for them.

The blunt version, switching off, suits genuinely unproductive hours such as overnight. The adjustment suits hours that work less well rather than not at all.

Note that automated bidding strategies may handle timing themselves, in which case manual adjustments can conflict. Worth checking which applies before setting them.

Days of the week

Frequently more variable than hours and less examined.

Many trades see enquiries concentrated Monday to Thursday, with Friday weaker and weekends split between very poor and unexpectedly good depending on the service. Home improvement research happens at weekends; emergency work does not follow the pattern.

The data answers this per business, and the answer differs enough that assuming is unwise. A landscaping company and an emergency plumber will have opposite weekend patterns.

The timezone trap

Schedules run on the account timezone, which is set when the account is created and is occasionally wrong.

An account created by a supplier elsewhere may be running your schedule offset by several hours, which produces the exact problem the schedule was meant to solve.

Worth checking once, since it is invisible until someone looks and it silently undermines everything else.

What to do about the enquiries you do miss

Restricting hours means some genuine enquiries arrive when you are closed, which is a real cost worth mitigating.

An automatic reply confirming receipt and stating when you will respond keeps those people. A stated response time on the landing page sets the expectation before they submit.

Where the volume justifies it, an answering service changes the calculation entirely and may make running longer worthwhile, which is the same consideration as in call-only campaigns for trades.

The first thing to change

Turn off the hours when nobody could possibly respond and nothing converts, which for most service businesses is roughly midnight to six.

That single change costs nothing, takes two minutes, and on a small budget frequently recovers enough waste to be noticeable within a month.

Frequently asked questions

Should ads run twenty-four hours a day?

Rarely for a service business. A click arriving when nobody can respond costs the same as one during business hours and converts far worse, which a small budget can least afford.

How do I find the right hours?

Platforms report performance by hour of day and day of week. Read a few months of it to see where spend goes and where conversions come from.

Should I switch off or reduce bids?

Switch off genuinely unproductive hours such as overnight. Reduce bids for hours that work less well rather than not at all, which keeps those enquiries at a lower cost.

What if I do emergency work overnight?

Run overnight on emergency terms in a separate campaign. Mixing emergency and planned work in one schedule means one of them is always wrong.

What is the timezone trap?

Schedules run on the account timezone, set at creation and occasionally wrong. An account created by a supplier elsewhere can run your schedule offset by hours.

How do I keep enquiries that arrive when I am closed?

An automatic reply confirming receipt and stating when you will respond, plus a stated response time on the landing page so the expectation is set before they submit.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

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