10 Surefire Marketing Shortcuts

Life may be a journey, but we're talking about business now, where the shortest distance between two points is universally recognized as a straight line. We're talking shortcuts.

So as we wrap up 2010 and head into the new decade, I'd like to offer 10 surefire marketing shortcuts... for those who disagree with Chaucer's observation in the Canterbury Tales: "In wikked haste is not profit."

10. Skip the research. Surely your C-level executives have their fingers on the pulse of the marketplace; research would only muddy the waters.

9. Marketing plans are a huge waste of resources. You know what you want to do, so just get to it.

8. To paraphrase a quote from the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, "Budgets? We ain't got no budgets. We don't need no budgets! I don't have to show you any stinkin' budgets!"

7. Traditional media is dead, long live social media. Open a Facebook page and a Twitter account and everything else will take care of itself.

6. Don't over think your marketing staff. This isn't rocket science; hell, it isn't even accounting. It's all about hiring attractive people who like working with people.

5. Never ever hire a branding consultant. Remember that the Nike logo was created by a graphic design student at Portland State University... for only $2/hour.

4. Publicity is a great and easy way to get FREE media coverage, and you don't need an agency to make media lists and draft copy and conduct media follow-up. Just write up your own news release and send it out over the free wire services... and watch the media clips come flooding in.

3. Thanks to fast and easy website builder programs, virtually anyone can create a great site in a matter of hours – even an e-commerce site. So skip the web developers, designers, programmers and SEO experts... it's just a lot of excess baggage.

2. Yeah, even in this electronic age, you still need literature, but you don't need to pay for overpriced services. Write it, design it and print it yourself. Branding is for suckers.

1. To be completely honest, marketing is the greatest boondoggle of the past century... well, next to banking (but that's a whole other list). Consider eliminating marketing altogether.