EMBiz: Elevate Your Ad Copy With Literary Devices
Hi, I'm Cody, Content Director at Elevate My Brand. In a previous EMBiz, we talked about rhetorical strategies, the rhetorical triangle by Aristotle, and how that would improve your optimization and your advertising strategies. In this EMBIZ video, we're talking about literary strategies and how they can improve your headlines and descriptions in your advertising, especially if you're in a crowded ad market. So let's go through several different literary strategies and how you can employ those in your content and your ads.
Alliteration
The first is alliteration. Everybody loves alliteration. It's super fun, but it also increases memorability. So it's going to increase your brand recall if you have a really cool phrase that is easy to remember and has a sort of cadence to it that is associated with your brand. That's one of the reasons why jingles are so popular and great with brands, because they have a rhythm that people can attach to. So try alliteration.
Bandwagon
The next one is bandwagon, a literary technique, sort of, and it is used to signal social proof. If everyone else is doing it, then maybe you should do it too, or at least give it a try. So testimonials are kind of used in there in bandwagon, technique reviews, etc. But if you make people feel that sort of FOMO factor, then they're going to be more likely to take action.
Call to action
The third one is a call to action. So, really inciting action in people, motivating them, maybe use, you know, stronger language when you get to the place where you want to make people take an action in order to encourage people to do what you want them to do. That also aligns with their specific needs.
Juxtaposition
The next one is juxtaposition, which is placing two or more things side by side to compare and contrast. That allows you to highlight differences. You see this a lot with those charts that are like our brand and three other brands. And they have check marks where we are this, we are this, we are this, and they are none of those things, or some of them hit some of the boxes, but not all of them. So being able to put juxtaposition into play in order to show that you are greater in some areas or all areas over your competitors is a really great technique to be able to use. Able to show your value in your ads.
Metaphor
The next one is a metaphor. People just get things better when you use a simile or a metaphor in order to say we are like this, right? Especially if you're like blazing new territory. If you're creating a new category to get People to understand what it is that you do, maybe use metaphors in order to put it into terms that people can understand. You can also. It's great for simplifying things, but it's also really great in the tech industry. So just keep that in mind.
Hyperbole
The next one is hyperbole, and that is really the greatest literary technique of all time. Just kidding. That's just an example. Hyperbole is when you emphasize a point almost to absurdity. Right. So you don't even necessarily have to be completely, not necessarily truthful, but to. If you make it so that it's very clear that you are exaggerating the point, you can use that for humor. You can use that for memorability. So hyperbole is a way that, if you tastefully and tactfully use it, you can increase the memorability of your ad.
Personification
The next one is personification, or we can also call it characterization, to put it in literary terms. And this is really just tailoring those ads to specific Personas, like buyer Personas. It just makes the products more relatable. It puts it into context that those specific buyer Personas that you've targeted really understand. So, using that as a way to really create separate ad sets that are more targeted. This works really well with all of the other tactics we're talking about as well.
Repetition
The next one is repetition. The next one is repetition. The next one is repetition. Make sure that you reinforce those key messages and ideas. Maybe that is in the language you use. Maybe that is in using your ad strategy to target the same people who've seen your ads over and over and over. Right. I think you could even play off of using repetitious language and making that same ad show to the same people over and over as a sort of, like, fun way, if you have the time, energy, and budget to play with that. But repetition, I think it's something like you really need people to hear something 8 to 12 times before they really internalize it. So play with repetition.
Rhetorical questions
And then the final one is a rhetorical question. Have you ever used these in your ads? That's a rhetorical question. Using those really encourages thought, and it's not like you're expecting them to answer. What you're really just trying to do is get them to think about their answers and think about their challenges and their needs and the solutions that they are looking for.
Final Thoughts
So those are a lot of literary techniques and strategies you can use to optimize your ads. And of course, if you're not sure how to employ them, you can call the advertising experts here at EMB.