What Should Your Brand Make Videos About? A Founder’s Guide to Finding Ad Ideas

You know your business needs video. You may already have access to AI tools that can generate scenes, create presenters, and produce voiceovers.

Yet the hardest question often comes before production:

“What should we actually make?”

For SaaS founders, the product can feel too complex to explain in a short ad. For e-commerce founders, there seem to be only so many ways to show the same product. Without a creative team, planning content can become a cycle of browsing competitors, saving examples, and waiting for inspiration.

There is a more practical starting point: your customers.

Their problems, questions, objections, and experiences give you the raw material for advertising. The task is to turn that material into clear, testable video concepts—not invent something extraordinary from nothing.

Start with the Customer’s Situation, Not Your Feature List

A feature describes what your product does. An advertising idea connects that capability to something a customer wants to change.

Consider the difference:

Product feature	Customer benefit	Potential video idea
Automated reporting	Less time assembling updates	A founder preparing for a meeting while still chasing numbers across spreadsheets
Shared project dashboard	Clearer visibility into responsibilities	A team trying to answer a simple question: “Who owns this?”
Waterproof backpack	Protection for belongings during a wet commute	A commuter caught in the rain with a laptop in their bag
Removable, washable cover	Easier cleanup after everyday messes	A spill followed by a straightforward cleaning demonstration

These are illustrative concepts, not claims about specific products. Any demonstration should reflect what the advertised product actually does.

The useful question is not simply, “What are our features?” It is:

“What becomes easier, less frustrating, or more achievable because this feature exists?”

TikTok’s product advertising guidance uses this same progression: list a feature, ask why it matters, and keep going until you reach a meaningful customer benefit (TikTok Ads).

That benefit becomes your starting point for creative development.

Find Ad Ideas in Four Places You Already Have Access To

You do not need a brainstorming workshop to begin. Start with the conversations your business is already having.

1. Customer problems

Look for specific situations rather than broad categories.

“Small businesses struggle with productivity” is difficult to turn into a distinctive video.

“A founder spends Friday afternoon copying campaign results into a client report” gives you a person, a task, a moment, and a frustration.

Ask:

• What is the customer doing immediately before they need our product?
• What makes that task difficult?
• What workaround are they using?
• What happens if they leave the problem unresolved?

For SaaS, investigate repeated manual tasks, handoff problems, and information gaps.

For e-commerce, investigate the circumstances around use: packing for a trip, cleaning up after dinner, finding something that fits, or replacing a product that failed.

Write down the situation before proposing the solution. It will help you avoid an ad that introduces the product before giving anyone a reason to care.

2. Sales objections

An objection identifies something a buyer needs to believe before moving forward.

Examples include:

• “This looks difficult to set up.”
• “We already use a spreadsheet.”
• “I’m not sure it will work for a team our size.”
• “Why does this cost more than the alternative?”
• “Will it fit in my carry-on?”

Each can become a video brief.

A setup objection might lead to an onboarding walkthrough. A price objection might lead to an explanation of materials, included capabilities, or relevant differences. A size concern might call for a clear physical demonstration.

Do not assume the answer has to be a founder speaking to camera. Sometimes the strongest response is simply showing the thing the buyer is unsure about.

3. Questions from sales and support

Ask your team:

“What do we explain repeatedly?”

Then review discovery calls, demo notes, support tickets, customer emails, and comments on your existing content.

Questions such as “How does it connect to our current tools?” or “How do I clean it?” can become useful videos because they define a concrete information gap.

TikTok specifically recommends listing the questions your audience asks and answering them through content, including video (TikTok Ads).

Not every question needs to become a paid ad. Some belong on a product page, in an onboarding sequence, or in a retargeting campaign. Capture them first; decide where they belong afterward.

4. Reviews and customer feedback

Reviews can reveal both what customers value and how they describe it.

A company might say:

“Centralized workflow management.”

A customer might say:

“I finally stopped asking three people for a status update.”

The second statement offers a more concrete scene.

Look for:

• What customers were struggling with before buying.
• What surprised them after using the product.
• Which benefits they mention without prompting.
• What almost stopped them from purchasing.
• Which words or situations appear repeatedly.

Keep the original wording in your research notes. Distinguish direct quotations from your own interpretation, and do not turn a real comment into an invented customer story.

Turn One Benefit into Several Advertising Concepts

You do not need a different product benefit for every video. You need different ways to make a relevant benefit understandable.

Imagine a SaaS product that helps teams reduce the manual work involved in preparing reports.

That single benefit could support several concepts:

Creative angle	Opening idea	What the video explores
Recognizable frustration	“Your report is due. Your numbers are in six different places.”	The problem with the current workflow
Product demonstration	“Here’s how this report comes together.”	The actual steps in the product
Alternative comparison	“Two ways to prepare the same weekly update.”	Differences between manual and automated workflows
Objection response	“Already have a reporting spreadsheet?”	Where the product adds value beyond the existing approach
Founder perspective	“I didn’t start a company to spend Fridays formatting reports.”	Why the problem matters to the buyer
Customer story	A verified account of how a team changed its reporting process	A real experience supported by evidence

These are different concepts because they make different arguments.

By contrast, changing the background color, music, or opening caption while keeping the same argument creates a variation of a concept.

Both are useful, but they answer different questions:

• Concept testing asks, “Which reason to care resonates?”
• Execution testing asks, “How should we present that reason?”

Before producing a large batch, make sure your idea list contains genuinely different messages—not just different versions of the same ad.

Choose the Format That Matches the Question

A product demonstration, customer story, comparison, and problem explainer should not be treated as interchangeable templates. Each has a different job.

Product demonstration: “How does it work?”

Show the product completing a task or delivering a relevant function.

For SaaS, that might mean a focused screen recording rather than a tour of every menu. For e-commerce, it might mean showing assembly, size, cleaning, or everyday use.

Choose this format when the buyer needs clarity.

Customer story: “Has it helped someone like me?”

Build the video around a real customer’s situation, decision, and experience.

The story does not need a dramatic transformation. A specific, credible improvement can be enough to explain the value.

Choose this format when you have a documented experience and permission to use the relevant material. If the example is fictional, present it as an illustration—not a testimonial.

Comparison: “Why change what I already do?”

Compare your product with a relevant alternative: a manual process, an older product, or another way of solving the problem.

Use a fair basis for comparison. Make the conditions and limitations clear, particularly when discussing performance, cost, or time savings.

Choose this format when the buyer understands the problem but questions whether switching is worthwhile.

Problem explainer: “Why is this happening?”

Help the audience recognize or understand a difficulty before introducing the solution.

For example, a SaaS ad could explain why approvals stall when requests are spread across email and chat. An e-commerce ad could illustrate a packing problem before showing a product designed to address it.

Choose this format when the situation needs context.

These approaches are compatible with TikTok’s guidance to show products in action through demonstrations, comparisons, and customer use cases, rather than relying only on descriptions (TikTok Ads).

Build an Idea Bank Instead of Waiting for Inspiration

A useful creative process should work on an ordinary Tuesday—not only when someone has a brilliant idea.

Create a shared spreadsheet or document with these fields:

Field	What to record
Source	Sales call, review, support ticket, interview, or founder observation
Audience	The specific buyer or user
Situation	The moment in which the problem appears
Problem or question	What the customer wants resolved
Product benefit	The relevant outcome your product supports
Concept	The argument or story the video will use
Opening hook	The first line or visual
Proof	Real footage, product behavior, documentation, or approved customer evidence
Next step	What the viewer should do
Status	Captured, shortlisted, scripted, produced, or tested

Then establish a simple recurring routine:

1. Collect new customer language and questions.
2. Group similar entries into themes.
3. Select one audience and one benefit.
4. Develop several distinct angles.
5. Choose the format that best explains each angle.
6. Check what evidence and production assets are available.
7. Write a brief before writing a full script.

Prioritize ideas that are relevant, specific, supportable, and practical to produce.

You do not have to know which idea will win before making it. You do need to know what each idea is trying to communicate.

Give Every Video a Clear Brief

Before production, complete this sentence:

“This video is for [audience], who struggle with [specific situation]. It will show [benefit] through [format or concept], supported by [evidence], and invite viewers to [next step].”

For example:

“This video is for agency founders who assemble client reports manually. It will demonstrate how our reporting workflow brings campaign data into one place, using real product footage, and invite viewers to book a demo.”

That is a production brief.

“Make something engaging about our platform” is not.

AI tools can help execute a defined idea. They cannot make an unclear message relevant simply by making it look impressive.

Your Next Video Idea May Already Be in Your Inbox

Before looking for a trend to copy, review your last few sales conversations, support requests, and customer reviews.

Find one recurring frustration. Identify the benefit that addresses it. Develop three different ways to show that benefit.

That gives you a practical starting point for experimentation—without asking your team to invent a new brand story every week.

At ShotCode, this is where we begin: turning customer problems and product value into creative concepts, then developing those concepts into scripts and finished AI-powered video ads.

You do not need to arrive with a fully formed creative idea. You need a product worth explaining and a clear understanding of the people it is built to help.

Keep reading

• You Have AI Video Tools. Why Are You Still Struggling to Make Ads? — turning a good idea into a finished ad
• What Does an AI Video Ad Really Cost? — budgeting for several concepts and versions
• How to Create E-commerce Video Ads Without a Film Crew
• How to Turn a Complex SaaS Product into a Clear 30-Second Video Ad
• How to Test Video Ads on a Small Budget Without Guessing
• How to Build a Repeatable Video Ad Workflow Without Hiring an In-House Team