Some real good advice here. So the thread necromancy won't hurt. I'll definitely second all of the classic stuff (carving out other instruments, predelay, good parrallel compression etc.). Here's some more ideas, that helped me on... let's say "suboptimal recorded" snare drums:
1.) Send the snare to two parrallel busses. One of them being the "fatener" and one beeing the "attacker".
- Gate (lots of release) the fatener and shape it with ultrafast compression (1176style or maybe
SKnote Disto) or even crank the sustain on a transient-designer. Add some distortion (yeah Decapitator works great, but I love me my
SDRR 
). Let this baby sing!
- If it needs to, bring out the attacker with some transient design (whatever plugin's at hand, SPL, Oxford or BitterSweet... Sleepytime is nice as well). Maybe even add some harmonic enhancement (no saturation!).
- EQ both busses - switching between phase-linear and "standard" EQs. (Sometimes even phase-distortion is your friend.) Blend to taste. Especially make use of high- (attacker) and low-pass (fatener).
2.) EQ is not allways what (at last my) ears expect. Try some mid-crack (1.2 to 1.7 kHz) and some 500 cycles as well.
3.) Lots of drummers kill all lowend-sustain of their snare - I seriously hate this in mixing jobs! (It's extremely common over here...
). Even if there's a big 180-200Hz bump, it's most likely gone after the initial attack. You may try a tiny amount of very short (<300ms) reverb and
no ERs in mono with an extreme lowpass (just above 500Hz)
in front of your compression.
4.) Bring down the stereo-width of the snare-verb. (The one you wanna hear a little.) I just demoed
Valhalla Plate and I shall most likely buy it (next year
). Use predelay to seperate this kind of rich-tail reverb from any early reflection-patterns and to make the snare upfront and standing out.
5.) Sometimes it needs a little
Lowender in guitar mode. But be careful...
...seriously:
BE CAREFUL!
6.) Still kind of a secret, but free, weapon:
Blockfish!
8.) Put
5orcery on your guitars. Use the snare on the sidechain and duck 150-300 Hz. Sometimes I even scan the envelope of my snare, invert it and use it for EQ-automization.
9.) Play it back in a real room and record the verberation. Use your stairwell or whatever's at hand. Preferably put the mic into a narrow corner of the room.
Have fun and a happy new year!
Henning
EDIT: There's no #7... so I'll say: less bottom mic - more noise! 
