HERO Marketing
Innovative Brand Strategy and Media Optimization

Highly creative, channel-agnostic, and customer-centric—HERO Marketing empowers its clients with integrated campaigns that drive engagement and action in today’s omnichannel environment.

By seamlessly merging brand development, advertising, marketing, and media services, HERO maximizes the impact of each campaign touchpoint. And supporting clients in vastly different B2B, B2C, and D2C industries helps them stay at the forefront of marketing trends and technology.

HERO’s expertise in combining traditional and digital strategies to craft recommendations based on key client challenges—and ability to significantly impact ROI—gives their clients a growing competitive advantage.

Richard Bumgarner, Founder and CEO, asserts, “Our greatest achievement is our clients’ success. Supporting their growth is our passion. Clients choose us for our ability to deliver breakthrough strategies and brand campaigns more efficiently and cost-effectively than our competitors.”

Bold Ideas, Bottom-Line Impact

HERO Marketing’s out-of-the-box thinking established them early as healthcare marketing leaders. Their work with a national Medicare client in 2014 is a case in point. Although data indicated high social media consumption among older adults, the client hesitated to venture into the channel.

Undeterred, the HERO team presented a compelling, data-backed argument, leading to a highly successful strategy and investment that continues to be an integral part of the client’s marketing mix today.

HERO continues to identify new technologies to help clients add low-cost, high-impact impressions to their campaigns. For example, HERO developed a voice-activated smart speaker audio spot to generate Medicare leads. The campaign featured a gamified print ad that cleverly included plan benefits in a word search. The call-to-action encouraged readers to engage with their Alexa device to learn more. The audio experience ended with a request for the reader’s phone number, paving the way for further engagement via text message.

The Key is to Stay Informed and Relevant

Being plugged into current events, business trends, and cultural shifts is all in a day’s work for HERO Marketing.

Over the past five years, the agency has skillfully woven current events into its campaigns, enabling a 100-year-old Bay Area brand to stay relevant to consumers. During the pandemic, HERO’s work highlighted the importance of healthcare accessibility and took a stand against AAPI hate crimes. When the California wildfires struck in 2020, they used the event as a backdrop for messaging around reliable care in uncertain times.

HERO embraces the power of hyper-regionalizing campaigns and walking a mile in the customer’s shoes to understand the target’s mindset and deliver relevant content.

Bumgarner notes, “We delve into existing research when formulating our go-to-market strategies and often conduct our own. Our recommendations leverage industry trends and new technologies—from smart speakers and QR codes to programmatic digital-out-of-home which captures smartphone IDs for retargeting. This allows us to understand our audiences’ mindset and engage them in new ways with messaging that answers the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Tackling Healthcare Provider Challenges Head-On

It’s no secret that many healthcare clients are contending with staffing challenges. This issue isn’t limited to providers’ clinicians and often extends to their marketing teams. HERO often serves as an integral extension of these internal teams, accelerating time-to-market, driving optimal outcomes, and ensuring no crucial opportunity is missed.

The agency recommends that care providers take a digital-first approach to marketing their services to better serve patients and remain competitive in today’s healthcare landscape rife with tech disruptors and DIY consumers. Bumgarner points out, “Healthcare is now as decentralized as banking. It’s not about a place you go. It’s a thing you do— when and how, to your liking, through your choice of a la carte services and technology.”

“In the current healthcare landscape, the competition is intensifying with disruptors like Amazon Clinic and One Medical. Even retailers like CVS and Walmart are increasingly entering healthcare and doing an excellent job penetrating underserved markets,” says Kim Johnson, COO and Managing Director. To assist clients in navigating these challenges, HERO employs a holistic marketing approach, focusing on efficient media spend and applying proven strategies to increase market share.

HERO helps clients meet regulatory requirements, including HIPAA, CMS, ADA, and DEI initiatives, thus promoting a more accessible, equitable, and inclusive healthcare environment. With today’s healthcare market witnessing frequent mergers and acquisitions, HERO has also honed its expertise in executing cross-channel rebranding campaigns.

Hero Provides Pricing Options

Diverging from the traditional hourly rate model used by most agencies, HERO provides clients a variety of tailored pricing options. This flexibility allows clients to adjust services, deliverables, and timelines to customize the campaign’s scope, schedule, and budget to their specific needs.

“Our clients consistently praise us for defying the adage, ‘Fast, quality, or cheap. Pick two.’ Our commitment to delivering great work at a great price has led to our Repeat Client Club, with many clients returning two and even three times,” says Johnson.

With a diverse portfolio of healthcare clients, including national and regional brands, insurers, medical groups, and tech startups, HERO leverages its vast experience to provide innovative strategies and cost-effective campaigns that improve ROI for an expanding client roster.