Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out!
Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on your question. It's a common one I see from people starting out with Meta ads, so you're not alone in wondering about it.
Honestly, the short answer to your question about turning ads off at night is: it probably doesn't make the difference you think it does. In fact, for an account that's only three months old, it could actually be doing more harm than good. I know that sounds a bit backwards, but I'll explain why. The bigger picture is that focusing on when your ads run is a micro-optimisation, and right now, you should be focused on the major levers that will actually move the needle on your results. Let's get into what those really are.
I'd say your focusing on the wrong thing...
When you're new to this, it's easy to get caught up in tactics like dayparting (scheduling ads for certain times). You read about it on a blog, someone mentions it in a forum, and it feels like a clever trick to save money. The logic seems sound: why spend money when people in the US and Canada are asleep? But here’s the thing Meta's algorithm is a powerful learning machine. It needs data, and lots of it, 24/7, to understand who your best customers are and when they are most likely to convert.
When you turn your campaigns off every night, you're essentially hitting the pause button on this learning process. Every morning, the algorithm has to ramp back up, which can lead to unstable performance and costs. The "learning phase" exists for a reason, and constantly interrupting it is like trying to teach a student who only shows up for half the lessons. They'll never really get it. For a mature campaign with tons of historical data, you *could* use scheduling to bid less agressively overnight, but for you, it's a distraction.
The real reason your campaign performance might not be where you want it to be has almost nothing to do with what time it is. It's almost always down to three core things: your Offer (what you're selling and how you present it), your Audience (who you're showing it to), and your Creative (the ad itself). Get these three things right, and your ads could run at 3 AM on a Tuesday and still make you money. Get them wrong, and you can have the most perfect schedule in the world and still burn through cash with nothing to show for it. So let's talk about the stuff that actually matters.
We'll need to look at your offer... it must solve a nightmare
Before we even touch your ad account again, we need to be brutally honest about your offer. The number one reason paid ads fail is because the offer is weak, vague, or solving a problem no one urgently has. I see so many founders fall in love with their product, but they forget that customers don't buy products, they buy solutions to their problems. You need to stop thinking about your customer as a demographic ("males, 25-45, in the US") and start thinking about their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare.
What is the deep frustration or pain that your product or service solves? Your ad copy and your landing page need to speak directly to this pain. You need to become an expert in it. Let's take an example. Say you sell high-quality, ergonomic office chairs.
- -> Weak Offer: "Buy Our Ergonomic Office Chair. Made with premium materials. Free shipping."
- -> Nightmare-Focused Offer: "Is that stabbing pain in your lower back making your 8-hour workday feel like 16? Are you chugging painkillers just to get through a deadline? That's not just discomfort, it's your body telling you your cheap chair is costing you your health and productivity. Stop trading your long-term wellbeing for short-term savings."
See the difference? The second one hooks into a real, visceral pain point. It agitates the problem. This is a classic copywriting formula: Problem-Agitate-Solve. You identify the problem, you make them feel it even more intensely, and then you present your product as the clear, obvious solution.
Your offer also needs to feel like a no-brainer. One of the biggest mistakes I see is the "Request a Demo" or "Contact Us for a Quote" button. This is a high-friction, low-value ask. You're asking a busy person to commit their time to be sold to. It’s arrogant. Your offer needs to provide some kind of immediate value to earn their trust. For an eCommerce business, this could be:
- -> A compelling first-time buyer discount (20% off + free shipping).
- -> A free gift with the first purchase.
- -> A "try before you buy" program.
For a service business, it could be:
- -> A free, automated audit or checklist.
- -> A free 15-minute strategy call where you provide actual value, not just a sales pitch.
- -> A downloadable guide that solves a small piece of their problem for free.
You have to give something of value to get something of value (their money or their contact details). Without a strong, pain-focused, high-value offer, you are fundamentally doomed from the start, no matter what you do in Ads Manager.
You probably should re-think your targeting...
Now, let's talk about who you're showing your ads to. This is the second pillar. Here's an uncomfortable truth: if you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are actively paying Meta to find you the worst possible audience. You're telling the algorithm "find me the cheapest eyeballs," and it does exactly that. It finds people who scroll endlessly but never click, engage, or buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason. They are not in demand.
For any business that needs to make sales to survive, you should almost always be using a conversion-based objective. That means optimising for Leads, Sales, or whatever the most important action is for your business. This tells the algorithm, "I don't care about cheap eyeballs, go and find me people within my target audience who have a history of actually doing the thing I want them to do." This is a completely different instruction and leads to a completely different result. We once took over an account for a medical SaaS client that was spending a fortune to get a £100 CPA with awareness campaigns. By switching to conversion objectives and sorting out their targeting, we got that down to just £7. That's the power of telling the algorithm what you actually want.
So, assuming you're using a conversion objective, how do you pick your audiences? Most people do this backwards. They start throwing random interests at the wall to see what sticks. You need a structure. Here’s how I prioritise audiences for pretty much any account:
| Funnel Stage | Audience Type (In Order of Priority) | Why it Works |
|---|---|---|
| BoFu (Bottom of Funnel) - Highest Intent |
1. Added to Cart (last 7-14 days) 2. Initiated Checkout (last 7-14 days) 3. Previous Purchasers (for repeat business) |
These are your hottest leads. They were *this close* to buying. A simple reminder ad with a small incentive can be incredibly profitable. They know you, they want what you have. Don't let them forget. |
| MoFu (Middle of Funnel) - Warm |
1. All Website Visitors (last 30-90 days) 2. People who viewed specific product pages 3. Video Viewers (50%+) 4. Facebook/Instagram Page Engagers |
These people have shown interest. They've visited your site or engaged with your content. They're aware of you but weren't ready to buy. Your job here is to build more trust, show them different benefits, or showcase testimonials. |
| ToFu (Top of Funnel) - Cold |
1. Lookalike Audiences (LALs) of your best customers (e.g., LAL of Purchasers, LAL of high LTV customers) 2. Detailed Targeting (Interests, Behaviours) 3. Broad Targeting (only for mature accounts with lots of data) |
This is where you find new customers. Lookalikes are your most powerful tool here, as you're asking Meta to find people who are statistically similar to your existing buyers. Interest targeting is next, but you have to be smart. Don't target "fitness" if you sell yoga mats. Target "Lululemon," "Yoga Journal," specific yoga gurus. Be specific to the subculture of your customer. |
You need seperate campaigns for each part of the funnel. A retargeting ad for someone who abandoned their cart should look very different from a prospecting ad for someone who's never heard of you. For new accounts with a small budget, you might combine MoFu and BoFu into one retargeting campaign, but you absolutely must seperate it from your cold ToFu prospecting. This structure alone will make a massive differance to your results.
You'll need to understand your numbers...
This part is where most business owners switch off, but it's probably the most important concept in all of advertising. The question you should be asking isn't "How low can my cost per click go?" but "How much can I afford to pay to acquire a customer?" The answer to that question is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. You have no idea if a $50 cost per purchase is a disaster or a bargain. Calculating it isn't that hard. You just need three metrics:
- Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer spends with you per month (or year, depending on your model)?
- Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? (Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) / Revenue.
- Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? (Customers Lost This Month / Customers at Start of Month).
The calculation is simple. Let's imagine you run a subscription box business in the US.
| Metric | Example Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) | $50 / month | This is your average monthly subscription price. |
| Gross Margin % | 70% | After paying for the products in the box and shipping, you keep 70 cents of every dollar. |
| Monthly Churn Rate | 10% | Each month, you lose 10% of your subscribers. This means the average customer sticks around for 10 months (1 / 0.10). |
Now, let's do the math:
LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
LTV = ($50 * 0.70) / 0.10
LTV = $35 / 0.10
LTV = $350
In this example, every new customer you acquire is worth $350 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. This number is your North Star. A healthy business model aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to get a customer.
Max Affordable CAC = LTV / 3 = $350 / 3 = ~$116
Suddenly, you have clarity. If you're getting customers for $40, you're doing brilliantly. If you're paying $90, you're still profitable and can scale. If you're paying $150, you have a problem that needs fixing urgently. Without knowing this, you're just guessing. Knowing your LTV frees you from the tyranny of cheap leads and allows you to advertise with confidence.
This is the main advice I have for you:
I know this is a lot to take in. We've gone from a simple question about ad scheduling to a deep dive into business strategy. But that's because I want to give you advice that will actually help you succeed long-term, not just a quick tip that won't make a real impact. It all comes down to building a solid foundation. Here's a summary of what we've discussed and what I reccomend you focus on for the next 90 days.
| Area | Common Problem | Recommended Action |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign Setup | Obsessing over minor details like dayparting; turning ads off and disrupting the learning phase. Using the wrong campaign objective (e.g. 'Reach'). | Leave your ads running 24/7. Switch your campaign objective to 'Sales' or 'Leads' (whatever your main conversion is). Let the algorithm do its job. |
| The Offer | Your offer is generic and focuses on features, not on solving a deep, urgent customer pain. Your call-to-action is high-friction (e.g., "Contact Us"). | Redefine your Ideal Customer Profile based on their 'nightmare' problem. Rewrite your landing page and ad copy using a Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. Create a low-friction, high-value offer (e.g., a strong discount, free valuable download, easy trial). |
| Audience & Targeting | Targeting is unstructured and unfocused. You're not separating cold, warm, and hot audiences. Your interest targeting is too broad. | Implement a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu campaign structure. Create seperate campaigns for prospecting (ToFu) and retargeting (MoFu/BoFu). Prioritise retargeting your hottest audiences (cart abandoners). For ToFu, start with Lookalikes of purchasers if you have the data, otherwise use highly specific interest targeting. |
| Measurement | You're flying blind without knowing your key business metrics. You're focused on vanity metrics like clicks instead of profitability. | Calculate your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Determine your maximum affordable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) based on a 3:1 LTV:CAC ratio. Judge all campaign performance against this CAC target. |
Getting this right is a full-time job. It requires expertise in copywriting, data analysis, strategy, and a deep understanding of how these advertising platforms actually work. Trying to figure it all out yourself through trial and error can be incredibly expensive, often costing far more in wasted ad spend than it would to just hire an expert in the first place.
If you've read through this and feel a bit overwhelmed, that's completely normal. The good news is, this is what we do all day, every day. We've helped dozens of businesses, from SaaS startups to eCommerce brands, build these foundational systems and scale their advertising profitably. I remember one eCommerce client in the subscription space where we achieved a 1000% Return On Ad Spend by fixing these exact issues.
We're happy to offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute consultation where we can take a look at your ad account and website together and give you some specific, actionable advice on these points. It's a chance for you to get some expert eyes on your strategy and see if we might be a good fit to help you grow.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
