First draft ad sets for a new client, inside an hour

A good kickoff shows the client that you have already thought about their business. Draft ads do that faster than a slide about your process. The risk is the opposite: a rushed draft with a wrong price or the wrong logo that someone mistakes for a final file.

This page is a process for agency owners and freelancers. It covers the intake, an hour broken down minute by minute, how to label drafts, how to present them, and the checks that stop a draft going live by mistake. Where it helps, I show where Higgsfield fits.

This page may contain affiliate links from which Blur Studio earns commissions.

The problem: a new client wants ideas on day one

Clients judge an agency fast. In the first call they want to see something that looks like their brand. Making that by hand means a designer, a few days and a delay to the kickoff. Skipping it means a call full of promises and nothing to look at.

Drafts solve this if you keep three things straight:

• A draft is a question to the client ("is this the direction?"), not an answer.
• The ad is the evidence. The angle (the main idea or promise) is what you are selling.
• Nothing leaves your folder until the client has said yes in writing.

Options, cheapest first

1. One ad by hand in a free design tool. Costs nothing. Right when you only need one concept for a pitch.
2. Canva. A drag-and-drop design tool with templates and brand kits. It has a free plan; check the vendor page for what each paid plan costs in your currency. Its Business plan lists brand approvals, which helps if several people touch the files.
3. Creatify. An AI tool that makes video and image ads from a product link. Its pricing page (read 3 November 2026) shows Standard at $10 a month and Pro at $38 a month on annual billing, or $15 and $55 billed monthly, plus a small free plan of 10 credits that adds a watermark. Its Max plan lists multiple seats, which suits an agency.
4. Higgsfield Ads Studio. Reads a website, builds a brand kit and makes ad variations. Its page shows no credit cost or limits, so check the product screen. The owner-side version is in ad images with your logo and colours.
5. A freelance video editor or UGC creator. UGC means user-generated content, ads that look like a real customer filmed them. Ask for a quote. Better for real people and real testimonials.

For a bigger comparison of video tools for agencies, see best AI video generators for agencies.

What a good first-hour draft pack looks like

Four drafts, not forty. The pack I would show is two offers across two angles, in one shape. Here is a made-up example for a plumbing company:

	Angle A: speed	Angle B: trust
Offer 1: emergency callout	"Burst pipe? We arrive in 2 hours"	"Licensed, insured, 15 years local"
Offer 2: yearly boiler check	"Book a 30-minute check online"	"Boilers checked by the same engineer each year"

The client chooses between angles, not between pixel tweaks. Showing 40 near-identical images hides the strategy and makes the call longer. Once they pick an angle, you can make more variations.

The ten-minute intake that prevents the usual redo

Send this before the call, or fill it in with the client on the call. It prevents most rework.

1. Website address.
2. The two offers they most want to promote.
3. Forbidden claims (things they must never say).
4. Regulated terms (health, finance, legal or any word their industry restricts).
5. Brand font and colours, or a link to a brand guide.
6. Logo files, with a transparent background if possible.
7. Three competitors, so you can see what the market looks like.

Also look at the client's existing ads. Meta keeps a public Ad Library (a searchable archive of ads running on Facebook and Instagram), and it shows what a client and their competitors already run. An agency blog (Madgicx) lists the Meta Ad Library, TikTok's Creative Center and your own client data as its go-to sources for ideas. Note two or three formats that competitors repeat, then decide whether to copy the format or do the opposite. Never copy another company's ad wording or images. Turning those findings into concepts is covered in competitor creative analysis with AI sketches.

A tip that adds value: if the client's site has old prices or placeholder text, an AI draft will repeat it. Note that as a finding in your kickoff notes. It is a useful observation for the client, not a tool failure.

Where Higgsfield Ads Studio fits

I keep this short because the tool is described in full in the Ads Studio and Click to Ad guide and the Marketing Studio guide.

Per Higgsfield's own Ads Studio page, you enter a website and it builds a brand kit (logo, colours, voice, selling points), imports products, and makes variations with headlines and calls to action. The page lists 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16. But Higgsfield's in-product quote tool for Ads Studio, read through its Claude connection on 2 November 2026, listed 1:1, 9:16, 16:9 and 3:4 and no 4:5, so check the ratio menu before you tell a client which sizes you can show.

For agency use, three points matter:

• No published credit cost. The cost shows in the product before you run. Measure cost per approved draft over your first few kickoffs rather than guessing. My credits guide explains how.
• Use a paid plan for client work. Outputs on a free account carry a Higgsfield watermark. Higgsfield's pricing table marks commercial use as not included for Free while its help center says use of outputs is not restricted to paid plans. Drafts may be fine, but for anything you hand over I would use a paid plan. At the time of writing, Starter is $19 a month with 270 credits and Plus is $59 a month with 1,200 credits. Check the pricing explainer and Higgsfield's own page for current numbers.
• Team seats. Higgsfield lists Team plans from $65 per seat, with admins able to see members' content on any plan. Check the business terms if several people share one workspace.

The hour, minute by minute

This is a plan you can run, not a record of one. Adjust the times.

Minutes	Task
0 to 10	Read the client site and the brand rules. Fill in the intake sheet. Note stale prices or missing pages.
10 to 15	Choose two offers and two angles. Write each angle as one sentence.
15 to 25	Check or fix the brand kit: logo, main colour, font, voice line.
25 to 40	Make the four drafts. Keep the batch small so the review stays short.
40 to 50	Check every draft against the client site: price, name, logo, contact details, claims.
50 to 60	Label and export the files. Draft the approval email. Prepare three slides.

Pass for the hour: four drafts exported, each with price and claims checked against the client's site, one person has reviewed them, and the approval email is drafted. Fail: if you cannot get four clean drafts in 60 minutes, the cause is usually the site data or missing brand files, not the tool. Stop and ask the client for better inputs.

Mark them as drafts and keep them off live accounts

The most expensive mistake is a draft that ends up in a live campaign. Prevent it with simple rules:

• Put "DRAFT, not approved" on the image and in the file name, for example clientname_offer1_angleA_DRAFT_v01.png.
• Rule for the team: a draft never goes into an ad manager before written approval from the client.
• Keep drafts in a private folder. Do not post them publicly.
• If you made drafts for a prospect before a contract, say so plainly. Using a prospect's logo and product photos before they sign is a goodwill and rights question. Keep drafts private and tell them they are for discussion only.

Walking the client through it and getting approval

Three slides are enough.

1. Strategy: who the audience is and what the offer is.
2. One slide per angle: the two drafts for that angle and why you chose it.
3. What we need from you: which angle to take forward, any claims to remove, any missing files.

After the call, send an email that lists the drafts by file name, the angle chosen, any changes, and a line such as "Please reply 'approved' to confirm which drafts may be used." That reply is your written approval. Keep it with the files.

On billing, decide before kickoff whether drafts are free pre-sales work or billable. AI lowers your cost, but clients still expect you to have thought about their business. Say clearly what they are paying for.

Rights, claims and consent checks before you show anything

• Claims: check every sentence against what the client can prove. Remove health, earnings and "guaranteed" promises.
• People: do not use generated real-looking people as "customers". A fake person giving a testimonial can break the rules on fake reviews. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced a final rule in August 2024 that bans fake reviews and testimonials, and its announcement names AI-generated fake reviews as an example. One industry summary (an ad vendor's blog) says it took effect on 21 October 2024. Read the rule yourself or ask a lawyer.
• Real faces and voices: never use a real person's face or voice without their written agreement.
• Originality: Higgsfield's terms do not guarantee outputs are unique. Do not tell a client a draft is one of a kind.
• Labels: check each platform's current rules on labelling AI content before you run ads. This page is information, not legal advice.
• Real footage: if a claim must be real, such as a result or a demo, use real footage.

Who should skip this and do it by hand

• You are pitching one flagship campaign. A designer's single strong concept beats four fast drafts.
• The client's brand rules are strict or the client is in a regulated industry. Start with the brand guide and a human designer.
• You do fewer than two kickoffs a month. A free design tool is cheaper than learning a new one.
• The client site is thin or out of date. Fix the inputs first. A tool cannot invent a good brand.
• You need real testimonials. Hire a UGC creator or film the client's customers with their permission.

Also compare Higgsfield with Canva and CapCut, since a simple editor with approvals may suit an agency better than an AI tool.

How I'd approach this

I would treat the first hour as an intake exercise first and a drafting exercise second. Get the seven intake fields, fix the brand kit, make four labelled drafts, check them against the client's site and send the approval email. Do this once by hand, time it, and then try a tool. If the tool saves time on your second or third kickoff, keep it. If not, you have lost very little.

Track two numbers across your first few clients: the minutes from kickoff to four clean drafts, and the share of drafts that needed a fix before they were safe to show. If review time stays high, the tool is not saving you much.

If you do this for many clients, Blur Studio builds the repeatable version: an intake form, a draft folder, an approval page where the client signs off, and a shared asset library. See how I set that up. When you want to try a tool for the drafting step, you can look at Higgsfield's plans and read the cost on screen before you run anything.