Facepalm GirlNot so long ago Jason Demers listed what he thinks are the 7 Top Marketing Trends Of 2015 in his Forbes.com column.

Here is his list…

  1. Mobile-optimization will become more important than ever
  2. Social media ad spend will sharply increase as brands realize the importance of social media marketing
  3. Content marketing will be (even) bigger than ever
  4. Email marketing will receive a renewed focus
  5. The lines between SEO, content marketing & social media will become more blurred
  6. Brands will scramble to humanize
  7. Marketers will find new ways of making native advertising less promotional and more relevant

It’s a reasonable list and these are the trends. You can’t really ignore them. However, can you spot what’s missing?

Apparently the customer got lost in the shuffle. There is remarkably little emphasis on delivering delight to customers despite all the new technologies available for gathering data about what the customer wants. Every one of these seven trends is about the changing nature of message delivery.

The one overwhelming marketing trend of the past decade is the ever increasing control the customer has over a company’s marketing story. Have you noticed?

Brands are no longer what the marketers say they are, they truly are what customers say they are. Marketers can no longer rely on telling a powerful story alone no matter what medium they use. Their brands have become transparent, open for the world to see, and technology is the medium not so much for shouting a message but for listening for one.

I’d like to believe that all marketers are focused on the customer, but it is demonstrably untrue.

I wish that 2015 would be the year of legendary marketing but I’m not holding my breath.

I hope that 2015 is the year when your customer becomes the hero of your Buyer Legend; you’ll be a legend in my mind.