Most coaches can write the ad copy. Where they freeze is the image. You open the ads manager, you know you need a thumb-stopping creative, and you have no idea what it should actually look like, so you grab a smiling stock photo that looks like every other coach’s ad.
This prompt fixes that. It turns your offer into a clear creative concept plus a ready-to-paste image generation prompt, built the way Facebook ads for coaches actually need to be built: native-looking, emotionally specific, and easy to read on a phone. By the end of this page you’ll also understand why it works, so your next brief is sharper.
When to use this
- You’re launching a lead magnet, challenge, or webinar and need an ad image fast.
- You keep defaulting to generic stock photos that blend into the feed.
- You want a concept and a real image-generator prompt, not just vague advice.
- You want a couple of alternative angles to A/B test before you spend budget.
The prompt
Copy this whole block into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini:
You are an expert paid-social creative director who designs high-converting Facebook and Instagram ad images for coaches. Your job is to turn one offer into a single scroll-stopping ad creative: a clear visual concept plus a ready-to-use image generation prompt.
Before you create anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if anything below is unclear. Otherwise, proceed.
CONTEXT
- My niche: {{NICHE}}
- The offer this ad promotes: {{OFFER}}
- My ideal client: {{IDEAL_CLIENT}}
- The big promise in one line: {{BIG_PROMISE}}
- The text overlay I want on the image: {{HEADLINE_TEXT}}
- My brand vibe, style and colours: {{BRAND_VIBE}}
- Platform and dimensions: {{PLATFORM}}
TASK
Return the following, in this order:
1. CREATIVE CONCEPT: one short paragraph describing the single image idea and why it stops the scroll for my ideal client.
2. IMAGE PROMPT: a complete, copy-paste prompt I can paste into an image generator (DALL-E, Midjourney, or Gemini). Describe the subject, composition, lighting, colours, mood, and exactly where the headline text sits. Specify the aspect ratio for {{PLATFORM}}.
3. TEXT OVERLAY: the exact on-image headline (max 6 words, based on {{HEADLINE_TEXT}}) plus one optional sub-line (max 8 words).
4. 2 ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTS: two different visual angles I could A/B test, one line each.
CONSTRAINTS
- The image must look like a real, native social post, not a stocky billboard. Authentic over polished.
- Keep on-image text minimal so it reads on a phone and stays under Meta's text-heavy threshold.
- No fake logos, no real brand names, no celebrity likenesses, no invented statistics or claims.
- No corporate buzzwords. Concrete and human.
- Make sure the visual matches my brand vibe and speaks directly to my ideal client's emotion.
How to customize it
Replace the seven {{VARIABLES}} before you send it:
| Variable | What to put | Example |
|---|---|---|
{{NICHE}} |
Your specific coaching niche | career coaching for women returning to work after maternity leave |
{{OFFER}} |
What the ad promotes | a free 5-day Restart Your Career challenge |
{{IDEAL_CLIENT}} |
The person you want to reach | mums in their 30s nervous about re-entering the workforce |
{{BIG_PROMISE}} |
The transformation in one line | land an interview within 30 days without rewriting your CV |
{{HEADLINE_TEXT}} |
The on-image text overlay | Back to work in 30 days |
{{BRAND_VIBE}} |
Your visual style and colours | warm and reassuring, sage green and cream, soft natural light |
{{PLATFORM}} |
Where the ad runs and size | Instagram feed (1080×1350 portrait) |
See it in action (full example)
Here is the exact prompt, filled in for a returnship career coach. This is the whole input, nothing hidden:
You are an expert paid-social creative director who designs high-converting Facebook and Instagram ad images for coaches. Your job is to turn one offer into a single scroll-stopping ad creative: a clear visual concept plus a ready-to-use image generation prompt.
Before you create anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if anything below is unclear. Otherwise, proceed.
CONTEXT
- My niche: career coaching for women returning to work after maternity leave
- The offer this ad promotes: a free 5-day Restart Your Career challenge
- My ideal client: mums in their 30s nervous about re-entering the workforce
- The big promise in one line: land an interview within 30 days without rewriting your CV from scratch
- The text overlay I want on the image: Back to work in 30 days
- My brand vibe, style and colours: warm and reassuring, sage green and cream, soft natural light
- Platform and dimensions: Instagram feed (1080x1350 portrait)
TASK
Return the following, in this order:
1. CREATIVE CONCEPT...
2. IMAGE PROMPT...
3. TEXT OVERLAY...
4. 2 ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTS...
[rest of the prompt unchanged]
And here is the complete output the model returns:
1. CREATIVE CONCEPT
A woman in her mid-30s sits at a sunlit kitchen table with a laptop half-closed and a coffee in hand, mid-thought, looking quietly hopeful rather than stressed. It reads as a real moment your ideal client recognises from her own mornings, not a corporate office shot. The calm, lived-in scene lowers her guard, and the short headline names the exact outcome she’s afraid to hope for. That tension between a familiar scene and a bold promise is what stops the scroll.
2. IMAGE PROMPT (paste into DALL-E, Midjourney, or Gemini)
“Candid lifestyle photo of a relaxed woman in her mid-30s sitting at a bright kitchen table at home, soft morning light through a window, a laptop half-open and a mug of coffee beside her, she is looking slightly off-camera with a calm, hopeful expression. Warm and reassuring mood, sage green and cream colour palette, natural light, shallow depth of field, authentic and un-staged, shot on a 35mm lens. Leave clear negative space in the upper third for a text overlay. Portrait 4:5 aspect ratio (1080×1350), Instagram feed. No logos, no text in the image, no busy background.”
3. TEXT OVERLAY (add in Canva after generating)
Headline: Back to work in 30 days Sub-line: Free 5-day challenge for returning mums
4. 2 ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTS to A/B test
- Close-up of two hands closing a laptop with a small smile out of frame, headline bottom-left, sage tones, sense of a confident decision being made.
- Flat-lay on a wooden desk of a coffee, a notebook, and a phone showing a calendar with day 30 circled, top-down, cream and green, headline across the top.
Quick tip: run the kitchen-table concept and the flat-lay against each other first. The person shot usually wins on cold traffic, but the flat-lay is cheaper to produce if you’re testing fast.
That is everything you need: a concept, a prompt you can paste into an image tool, the overlay text, and two backups. Generate the image, drop the headline on in Canva, and it’s ready to upload.
Why this works
Four LLM principles are doing the heavy lifting here. Learn them and every prompt you write gets better:
- Role priming. The first line (“You are an expert paid-social creative director”) tells the model which slice of its knowledge to draw from. “Make me an ad image idea” pulls from the bland average of the internet; “act as a paid-social creative director” pulls from how people who actually run ads think. Always assign a role.
- Specificity in, specificity out. The model can only be as specific as your input. “Career coach” yields a generic businesswoman at a desk. “Mums in their 30s nervous about re-entering the workforce” yields a kitchen table at 8am, because you handed it the real emotion. The quality of the creative is capped by the quality of your
{{IDEAL_CLIENT}}and{{BIG_PROMISE}}. - Constraints are quality control. The rules “native social post, not a stocky billboard”, “keep on-image text minimal”, and “no fake logos or invented claims” each remove a common failure mode. Telling the model what NOT to do is as powerful as telling it what to do. The minimal-text rule alone keeps you out of Meta’s text-heavy penalty zone.
- Ask clarifying questions first. The “ask me up to 3 clarifying questions” line lets the model fill gaps by asking instead of guessing. If it isn’t sure whether your audience is cold or warm, it asks, and you avoid an image built on a wrong assumption. This single line is the biggest fix for generic AI output.
Do this now
- Copy the prompt above into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
- Replace the seven variables with your real niche, offer, client, promise, overlay, vibe, and platform.
- Send it. If it asks clarifying questions, answer them honestly.
- Paste the IMAGE PROMPT into your image generator, add the overlay text in Canva, and upload your first test.
Pro tips
- Describe a real moment, not a pose. “A woman closing her laptop with a small smile” beats “a happy professional woman” every time. Specificity is the whole game.
- Always leave negative space for text. Tell the image tool where the overlay goes so your headline isn’t fighting a busy background.
- Generate the alternatives too. The two A/B concepts cost you nothing to make and one of them usually beats your first idea. Test before you scale budget.
- Keep the on-image words to six or fewer. Phones are small and Meta penalises text-heavy images. Let the ad copy carry the detail; the image carries the emotion.
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