My first "real" job while a N.C. State University undergraduate was working as an intern at Mammoth Records in Carboro, NC. Back in late '90's, Internet technology lacked today's reach and marketing power. I only had the opportunity to use the Guerilla marketing tools provided to me at the time, with sparce use of Usenet or News Readers.

Back then Guerilla marketing was driven by lots of gimmicks, giveaways, and posters. Today Guerilla marketing employs a host of new tools that can tie into Usenet in a faster and more proficient way.

So, let's talk about Usenet or Binary Groups. Whatever you call them, if used properly they can provide great traffic results and reduce marketing costs - something I hope we all try to do.

If you're wondering what the hell a Usenet is and what does it have to do with Guerilla marketing, then you should head over to Wikipedia to read about Usenets, Readers, newsfeeds, and their uses.

In my opinion, Usenets are as close to word of mouth marketing versus any other form of online marketing and Usenet has been the least talked about marketing tool over the past 5 years.

Without spamming Usenet groups, your message can be seen, syndicated, and read by thousands or tens of thousands of people on a daily basis. Even though the use of this advertising medium can be more complex, as this UCLA Social Structure map shows, posting to Usenets can cut direct BtoB and BtoC marketing cost by more than 1/20th versus PPC or link building marketing. Usenet posting can also be sent to targeted readers or Usenet gateways very easily using the right newsreader or Usenet scripts.

The key to successful Usenet posting is posting something that gives value back to the news group communities or reader. This could be a tool or service that simplifies processes or could help members of that Usenet group in general.

For example, a recent real estate client of ours created a few nice tools designed to help real estate agents who needed help posting homes online at a faster rate. The goal was not only to drive traffic, but also to get agents to use these agent tools to better enhance it before taking on a wider market.

The best part of this 8 week long Guerilla marketing campaign is that it only costed $1-2k and provided far better results than our initial PPC campaign. We were also able to more thoroughly describe the "call-to-action" message to the users and build a significant base to help direct the future of their real estate agent tools.

Don't let the Usenet terms like scorefile, Skitt's law, and sock puppet (?) scare you. Reading more about using the Usenet in an effective way can quickly help you build more traffic within a shoestring budget.

In an effort to expand on Usenet use and their uses in Internet marketing, our next post will be reviewing a few of the better Usenet tools, how to use them, and also give a couple of case studies of successful Usenet campaigns.