You want a business you can be proud of. You want to tell all those unbelievers to bite you. How do you do this? Marketing, people.

1. Figure out what you’re trying to do.

Business types call this management by objectives. Are you trying to get new customers or retain existing ones? Some methods of marketing (signs, ads, etc.) catch the eye of people who don’t know about you yet. Other methods (newsletters, blogs, e-mails, follow-up calls) keep the customers you already have from jumping ship to Joe’s FlyByNight. Once you know what you’re trying to accomplish, it’s a lot easier to focus your energies and get things done.

2. Figure out your resources.

Business owners these days have more marketing options than they can count. Or shake a stick at. Or some other bad cliché. Figure out what you can afford in money and time. Once you know what you can afford, you don’t even have to think about the things you can’t afford.

3. You have lots of eggs. Use lots of baskets.

No individual marketing effort will be the key to your success. You might have the best looking brochure in the world but if you don’t have a great business card, consistent networking skills, run appropriate ads, post in the right web forums, or whatever else it is you could do, that brochure won’t take you anywhere except obscurity, with a quick stop at the welfare office.

4. Consistency, consistency, consistency.

You like blue on your business cards? Make your website blue. Make your shirt blue. Make your car blue. Make yourself blue. Be blue. Own blue. Rock blue.

This is what’s known in the marketing industry as branding. If you saw any random words put in a certain white script on a certain red background, you’d think of Coca-Cola. That’s what Coke wants you to think, and that’s what you want your customers to think. (Well, not about Coke. About you, stupid.) Coke doesn’t change its logo every three months, and neither should you. Think about it, pick something good, and then stick with it.

5. Go where your customers go.

You might have a great plumbing business but nobody’s going to buy from you if you’re selling at a craft show. This should be obvious, but it’s generally not. If the customers you want are wealthy homeowners, sticking a big-ass sign up in the laudromat is dumb. On the other hand, if you’re selling cheap moving services, the laundromat might be just the ticket. Did I just say “just the ticket”? I’m really sorry about that.

6. Burn the box.

You know your potential customers well enough to know where they go when they’re looking to buy, but where else do they go?

Let’s say you’re selling wedding cakes. Brides go to bridal fairs – every moron knows that. But where else do they go? They hire caterers. They interview DJs. They spend hours choosing overpriced envelopes that recipients will throw out within three minutes of opening. If you can get into these places, get to know these people, your chances of success through referral skyrocket. Then you come recommended, which is solid gold for a small business.

Also, your target market has other interests outside of this business. Yes, brides read bridal magazines. They also want to be the hottest newlywed on the beach, so you just might find them at the gym. Or Weight Watchers. Or buying laxatives.

7. Know what your customers want.

Then give it to them. Let’s use a new example. You make custom furniture. It’s on the lower end of the budget scale. Most of your customers are likely to be young families. Can you round the edges of your coffee table so toddlers won’t poke an eye out when they’re cruising around eating your iPhone? Can you make the height of your kitchen chairs adjust for growing kids? Do what you can to envision what your customers want, and then make sure to tell them about it. I’m going to repeat that one. TELL THEM ABOUT IT.

8. Find a niche. Now make it smaller.

A lot of first time entrepreneurs think that they want everybody to be their client. If you’re marketing to everybody, you’re also competing with everybody. The thing is, there are a bunch of existing firms with strong referral networks and bigger marketing budgets than you have. These are not the guys to be competing against. If you do photography, think about staying away from weddings. Everybody does weddings. What about babies? What about pregnancy shots? Consider glamour photography. Take pictures of people that they can put on their business cards. (Real estate comes to mind. Those guys are begging for head shots.) The smaller your niche, the greater your chance of being regarded as an expert in it.

9. Benefits, features, blah blah blah.

Nobody cares about your fantastic technology. Nobody cares that your widgets come with a patent-pending Widget-o-matic. They want to know what it does for them.

As far as you are concerned, from now on, heaters do not heat. They keep your customer’s family warm. Alarm systems do not deter burglars. They help your customer feel safe at night. Pool cleaners do not clean pools. They give your customers a relaxing environment so they can invite their friends over. Cell phones do not make phone calls. They make your customer’s teenager feel cooler than all of his friends. If you want more info on benefits and features, check out Sonia’s Squidoo lens. Supercool.

Follow these rules and become wildly successful. Unless your product sucks. Then you’re screwed.

In completely unrelated news, when I bought my website (not this one), I wanted RockStarMarketing.com. I’m not linking to them. Wanna know who owns that website? The Driver’s Agent Network. Pulled straight from the website:

“The Drivers Agent Network is a online recruitment marketing company that works exclusively in the trucking industry.”

These assholes have my dream domain. Please subscribe to my feed. It will make me feel better. Or you could submit it to Digg. That would be cool, too.