Pretoria Paving — Schedule Change Impact Assessment
On 20 June 2026, Pretoria Paving's Google Ads schedule was changed from running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to office hours only: Monday–Friday, 07:00–17:00. The daily budget stays the same — it is now concentrated into fewer, more competitive hours.
At first glance, the numbers look alarming. After-hours advertising was cheaper: R2.76 per click versus R6.08 during office hours. Evening and weekend time slots generated 62% of all Google Ads conversions. On paper, switching off those hours looks like cutting the most cost-efficient part of the account.
But Google Ads conversions are not the same as real customers. We cross-referenced 90 days of ad performance data with 2,050 actual leads from the Quote Chase list — the CRM where every enquiry is tracked from first contact through to accepted quote or decline. The picture it paints is completely different.
Leads that arrive during office hours are three times more likely to become accepted paving jobs. They get quoted more often (40% vs 18%), and when they do get quoted, a higher percentage accept. Meanwhile, half of all after-hours leads are not valid — spam, tyre-kickers, or enquiries from outside the service area.
We cross-referenced quote numbers from the Chase List against the Project Info operations sheet to tie leads back to actual project revenue. The result is stark: office-hours leads generated R6.96 million in matched project revenue versus R635K from after-hours — 91.6% of all revenue from 63.7% of leads. The average project value from an office-hours lead is R47,378, nearly double the R24,430 average from after-hours enquiries. Office-hours leads also progress through the pipeline at more than double the rate: 56.7% receive a site visit versus just 26.2% after hours.
There is a second, hidden benefit. Under the old 24/7 schedule, the daily budget was being spread so thin that Google could not show ads for 28% of eligible office-hours searches. The ads were running out of budget during the most valuable hours of the day — the very hours when people are most likely to call, get a site visit, and accept a quote. Concentrating the budget into office hours should recover a significant portion of those missed high-value impressions.
Verdict: The schedule change is well-supported by the data. The business trades a large volume of low-quality, after-hours leads for concentrated, higher-quality exposure during peak conversion hours. Expect fewer total enquiries, but a measurably higher proportion that turn into quotes and accepted jobs.
Google Ads metrics (CPC, CPL, conversions) told one story — that after-hours was cheaper and more efficient. But the CRM data tells the opposite story: after-hours leads rarely become actual paying jobs. The metrics that matter live in the quote-chase spreadsheet, not the Ads dashboard.
| Period | Leads | Pipeline | Won | Win Rate | Site Visit % | Not Valid % | Revenue | Rev/Lead | Avg Deal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Office Hours (Mon-Fri 7-17) | 1,306 | 222 | 163 | 12.5% | 56.7% | 26.7% | R6,964,535 | R5,333 | R47,378 |
| Weekday Evening | 342 | 18 | 13 | 3.8% | 26.6% | 46.5% | R351,279 | R1,027 | R29,273 |
| Weekend (Sat-Sun) | 403 | 26 | 19 | 4.7% | 25.8% | 52.1% | R283,900 | R705 | R20,279 |
We matched 173 completed projects in the Project Info operations sheet back to their original lead submission in the Quote Chase list via quote number. This links actual invoiced project revenue to the hour the lead first came in.
The ad budget was spread across 168 hours per week. During office hours — the most valuable time — Google was running out of budget and not showing ads for ~28% of eligible searches. Evening and night had low budget-lost impression share because fewer people search then, but those impressions were low-value anyway.
These are the pure Google Ads metrics. This is where the “cheap after-hours” story lives — but with the CRM context above, it is clear these are vanity metrics that do not translate to real business outcomes.
| Period | Spend | % of Total | Clicks | GAds Conv. | CPC | CPL |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Weekday Office (Mon-Fri 7-17) | R31,898 | 54.9% | 5,243 | 423.6 | R6.08 | R75.30 |
| Weekday After-hours | R12,699 | 21.9% | 4,594 | 332.1 | R2.76 | R38.24 |
| Weekend (Sat-Sun) | R13,469 | 23.2% | 4,122 | 358.3 | R3.27 | R37.59 |
Organic and direct traffic continues 24/7 regardless of the ad schedule. However, organic traffic is small — ~468 sessions vs ~10,843 paid sessions over 90 days — so the ad schedule change primarily affects paid traffic, which is the vast majority of visitors.
| Channel | Sessions | % of Total | GA4 Conversions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cross-network | 5,304 | 43.3% | 196 |
| Display | 4,927 | 40.2% | 1,143 |
| Paid Search | 612 | 5.0% | 29 |
| Direct | 661 | 5.4% | 33 |
| Organic Search | 468 | 3.8% | 14 |
| Other | 282 | 2.3% | 1 |