Stuck in a Creative Rut? Here’s Where I Actually Go for Ad Inspiration

We’ve all been there, staring at a blinking cursor, out of ideas, and one bad headline away from writing, “Are you a woman over 30 who loves dogs and digital products?” Whether you're burned out from client work or just tired of trying to make “clever” ads happen, this episode is your permission slip to stop reinventing the wheel.

I’m sharing the 3 exact places I go (every time!) to find inspiration for high-converting Meta ads, and spoiler: you already have access to them. If you're stuck in a creative rut, this is how you get out without spending hours on another AI prompt spiral.

Topics Covered In This Episode:

1. Use What’s Already Working: Start with your client’s organic posts—they’re mini case studies hiding in plain sight.
2. Don’t Stay in Your Niche: Creative breakthroughs often come from unrelated industries. Go look.
3. Stop From-Scratch Syndrome: Your job isn’t to be original. It’s to be strategic.
4. Build a Swipe System: Your future self will thank you for that Instagram Saved folder.
5. Analyze, Don’t Copy: Find what works and adapt the structure, not the words.

Find the full show notes at:  https://brandimowles.com/259

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Transcript

Stuck in Creative Rut? Here’s Where I Actually Go for Ad Inspiration

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Brandi: [00:00:00] Hey, hey, hey, and welcome back to another episode of the Serve Scale Sort podcast. My name is Brandy MAs, and I am your host, and I'm super excited today to talk about something. Every ad manager hits at some point. I. The Creative wall, and if this is your first time tuning into the Serve Scale, so podcast, welcome, welcome, welcome, my friend.

I am beyond excited to have you here. And if you are a returning listener, I'm just super excited that you show up every single week. Download the episode, listen, give feedback, and if this. Episode inspires you, gives you tips and tricks. If you could leave me a review, those reviews help our podcast get out to more and more people.

If you're listening to this on Apple, you just scroll down, leave a five star rating or whatever your rating is, and if you're listening to this on. Spotify, you can also give us a rating that just helps us be seen by more people so we can help more people. But back to today's [00:01:00] episode, the Creative Wall.

You know the one you're staring at the screen, you write copy for an ad client and nothing is clicking. It is just a blank screen and a little flashing mouse. You've tried being clever. You've tried using prompts in Chad DPT, and you're this close to writing. Are you a woman over 30 who loves dogs and digital product?

So if you've been feeling stuck or uninspired, today's episode is for you. I'm sharing the exact three places I go when I need inspiration. These are my tried and true ways to get out of a creative rut and find fresh angles that actually convert. So if you're ready to know exactly what to do when you're in a creative rut, let's dive on in.

Okay, so there's three places I'd love to go. Whenever I'm in a creative rut, it doesn't matter which order you do these, but here are the three best places to go. One is your client's [00:02:00] organic content. Yes, we start here. Now, here's the deal. A lot of us wanna make our business harder than it needs to be, and one of these is thinking that everything has to be created from scratch, that's fresh.

If we're not the one creating it, then we're not valuable to a client, and that's not the case. So before you look outward, look inward, what organic posts are already working for your client? What are people connecting with? What are they commenting? What are they? Which posts are they damning? Do they have that mini chat thing set out where it says comment a word, and then people can do that?

Which ones have gained the most traction when it comes to those? These posts are proof of concept. They show you. What already connects with their clients. You don't have to guess or waste ad money because you already know. You can see it working. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You just need to turn that post into a high performing ad.

Now, I always like to go see what my [00:03:00] clients have. Check out like what was the call to action? A lot of times it will be those MiniChat automations, and then I wanna make sure, is this compliant for ads? If it is, you can actually go into your ad set and just use existing post and run it as is. We do that a lot with clients.

Now the other thing is if it's not, 'cause I consult with a lot of people in the health and wellness and a lot of times their organic posts are not set up for ads. Like they break a bunch of roles. But what I'll do is take that exact same concept, but make it compliant and then create an ad the traditional way of going in through there instead of doing an existing post.

When you do this, you're short cutting the process. You are saving so much time. And the coolest thing is you're more likely to get results. So it's feels like you're cheating, but you're actually saving your client ad dollars and getting them better results. So that's where I always start with the organic content.

Now if you're like Brandy, they don't post [00:04:00] organic, then this, I have two other ways for you, so let's jump into that. The second one is the Facebook ad library. This is a area where you can go and just see what other people are doing, look at the competitors, people in adjacent niches, and totally different industries.

Some of the best ideas I get are from like real estate agents or travel bloggers or things like that, where they're not really in my niche, but they have really good hooks and they have things that are just like popping off. They're going viral. So I'm gonna look through ad library. Now, I do give myself a set amount of time, so maybe it's 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and I'm gonna go play around in there.

Don't get in your head about this. Some people are like, well, I looked at this person. I know they're running ads, but I can't find 'em. And they spend all this time, who cares? That's not the point. The point is to go and just find it. So when I'm talking about adjacent niches, maybe you're working with a lawn care company and all the lawn care companies that you look at in the ad library, they're all the same.

It's like billboard style ads. [00:05:00] They're all the same. But you could go to real estate agents and see what they're doing. They usually have really good ads, actually, and see what they're doing because they're actually serving a similar audience. They're serving homeowners or people who wanna buy a home and lawn care companies.

Serve. Usually homeowners, renters don't usually pay for their own lawn care. So when we're thinking about it, that would be an adjacent niche. Like, okay, let me go see what these lawn care or the realtors are doing for my lawn care company. You could also do like hvac, plumbing, all that kind of stuff, and see what those type of people, that would be an adjacent niche.

Okay, study why something works. Now you're not gonna know if it's performing really well. One of the indicators I like to look for is how long the A's been running. If it's been running for a long time, chances are it's working. People turn off ads that don't perform. They keep on ads that do perform, so that's a good indicator.

Also, you could [00:06:00] click over the ads, see how many comments, engagement, things like that, that it has, and that can be an indicator that it's working. What about it's working? Is it the hook? Is it the structure? Is it the visual? Like what do you think is working? And you can start to make some educated G guesses.

Now here's the deal. Don't copy curate. We wanna analyze the formulas behind what's performing and make it our own. So you don't wanna take one. HVAC companies, if you're working with HVAC and pretty much like copy their copy word for word that's stealing, that's plagiarism. What we wanna do. Is curate ideas, the formatting, can we use this kind of structure for our own copy?

We don't wanna just like copy and paste someone else's information. That's not what we're doing here and that's not what I'm teaching.

So when we look through there, we wanna use the ad library. it's like all your swipe files, but curated in one place for you. Okay, and the third place I like to look is my saved Instagram [00:07:00] folder, and this one is gold. I have this dedicated saved folder on Instagram where I collect any ad or post that stops the scroll for me, because if it caught my attention, that probably means it's a decent ad, and so I'm gonna save it in a folder.

Then when I go to create ads, I haven't. But here's the thing, they're not all in my niche. I save ads from all niches. So like if I see an e-commerce product like solo stove, but they did a really cool carousel, I'll save that. If I see a restaurant that did something really cool with Messenger, I'll save that.

So then when I go and need inspiration, I can look through my folder of Saved and see what I can pull from there. Sometimes it's the opening line. Sometimes it's. The layout. Sometimes it's just the overall vibe that I like. Having a swipe file makes it so much easier to find inspiration when you're stuck.

Pro tip here, your job as an ad manager isn't to come up with original ideas every time. It's to find what's working and make it work [00:08:00] with your clients' Messaging. So those are the three places I go. My client's organic, the Facebook ad library, and my saved folder on Instagram. So the next time you are staring at a blank doc and feeling like every idea has been done, go to the places where people are already paying attention.

Look at your client's best organic content. Check out the ad library. Be very intentional about this. Scroll your own new swipe folder in Instagram. That's where the magic lives. That's how you turn stuck into strategic. And if you wanna find out more ways to make ad management feel easier and less scattered, I have a free resource for you.

You can go to brandy and company.com/streamlined and get my AI guide for ad managers. I'm breaking down systems, templates, prompts that I use to keep client work organized. Reports done, creative ideas flowing [00:09:00] and results rolling in. You don't have to wing it or start from scratch every time. And this guide will show you exactly how to streamline the way you work.

And y'all, I hope this was helpful. Go and create your own saved folder. Go check out the ad library and Always look inward at what's already working for your client before you look outside. So my friends, I hope this was helpful. I hope it gets you out of the creative rut, and until next week, go out, serve your clients, scale your business, and so into the success you deserve.