Everyone involved in financial newsletter publishing or financial services marketing has heard about the six types of leads for a promo:

1. The Big Promise: This is nothing more than a huge screaming benefit… and doesn’t work as well as it once did.

2. Problem-Solution: You identify “the” major problem in your market and offer a compelling solution.

3. Secret System: You tease your prospects with the promise of a secret system that gets results.

4. Story: You build a promotion around a dramatic story or a particular company or stock.

5. Predictions: You create a compelling narrative around a specific prediction – such as the coming war with Iran will drive oil prices through the roof.

6. Invitation: This is simply a direct appeal to join an elite community involved in a specific niche.

Of course, most marketing professionals have used all of these leads at one time or another. But I would like to add another one to the list: The market summary.

In the past two years or so, I’ve experimented with almost all of the different types of leads. I find that story, problem-solution and prediction-based promos tend to do pretty well… but recently I’ve discovered that the market summary really works well with financial newsletters and financial services marketing.

It’s a fairly simply approach: You explore, in detail, a particular investing niche – whether it’s junior oil companies, blue chip stocks, micro cap stocks, dividend investments, master limited partnerships, REITs… the list is endless. You start off your promotion by taking a hard look at these investments, pointing out examples of spectacular profits and highlighting the pitfalls involved.

You make it as objective as possible: “So, you think you can make money writing covered calls?” you say. “Well, okay, here are some examples of how that works and how much money you can make.” But it’s not easy. There are at least 6 major problems you have to overcome – and then you list and discuss the problems involved when you try to make money with this investment.

From there, it’s relatively easy to introduce a way for a beginner to test the waters: your product or service! It’s simple. It’s easy. It has an astonishing track record. And it’s low risk: if it doesn’t work out for the prospect, they get all their money back.

I like the market summary because it’s relatively low key and not too promotional. It lends itself to advertorial type promotions that read almost like a special report from a brokerage… and, in fact, they work well for financial services companies generally, not just for financial newsletters.

There are other reasons why these promotions work so… reasons I don’t have time to go into here… and there are a few tricks and ways to finesse these promos. But the basic principle is sound: By exploring a given market in detail, highlighting both the potential profits (shown through real life examples) and the very real obstacles to success, you instantly identify yourself as an authority on the market and that predisposes your prospects to look at the product or service you are offering in a favorable light.

By the way, this works for promotions outside of the financial world as well. If you’re marketing a nutritional supplement, for example, you can do a market summary for it as well: you simply start out with an overview of the particular supplement… why people got interested in it… what the early results were… what were the problems and frustrations that arose from early versions of the product… and what the latest discoveries have been associated with this product. From there, you once again offer a way for the prospect to try it out risk-free: your new and improved version of the product.

This is a very powerful type of lead. It’s not a magic bullet and doesn’t work for everything. But when you’re mulling over how to approach the market of a product or service, you might consider the market summary as one of the arrows in your quiver.