Hero: How Stout Heart Is Turning the Digital Agency Model On Its Head

Who is this Hero you speak of?

Hero is a propriety platform, built on top of the most widely-used CMS ever (WordPress), that allows us to rapidly prototype and develop sites that are 100% custom built to suit our partner’s needs. Hero takes care of the heavy lifting. It’s a foundation that we build each and every one of our sites on, but it is far from cookie-cutter.

With every site we do we are able to focus in on our partner’s needs. Our designers and developers work together, not apart, to build our sites using Hero as their foundation, and our platform allows them to do it quickly. After an initial engagement, using Hero we are ready to start showing our partners a living and breathing prototype within days, not months.

But don’t think for a second that this compromises quality. Every site we build is completely custom designed and built. In fact, our partners (that’s you) work side by side with our project teams to get the site just where you like. No more waiting for months to review comps that may or may not be the vision you were hoping for. No more sitting and wondering if the feature you requested seven months ago at the kickoff is going to make it to the site on launch day. Our partners watch the site grow, deliver feedback and make suggestions from day one. It’s your site, and we think you should probably be involved.

But how is it better?

Glad you asked. So let’s say little Billy’s Lemonade Stand business is taking off and he’s ready to grow. He needs a website.  He has a few options…

1. He could ask his older brother, Bobby, to build it for him. Bobby is in middle school and knows a thing or two about HTML, but he’s no whiz kid and he’ll probably bail on the project halfway through. But Bobby isn’t charging, so there’s that.
2. He could find an agency in town to put together a proposal. After a few rounds of creative and the site build, Billy has eaten through his entire budget and is now living on his lemonade because he can’t afford real food any longer. And Billy’s sales haven’t exactly taken off because after paying for the website he didn’t have the money left over to do any marketing.
3. Or, he could call Stout Heart. Billy’s real aim was E-commerce. He wanted to start selling his Lemonade online. So Stout Heart built out a beautiful website for Billy on Hero. Because they saved so much time and effort they were able to add an E-comm system, and even had some money left in the budget to kick off Billy’s marketing effort.

Hero is a beginning

Our platform allows us to immediately focus on our partner without having to deal with the concrete and rebar every time.  We can compartmentalize our efforts into what is best for you.  Hero is flexibility and focus, fast-moving yet agile and deliberate.  It saves time and money and it’s battle-tested and secure.  At the end of the day, it’s what is best for us and it’s what is best for our clients, and it lives in the future of how digital agencies and their partners succeed.

Your company is successful for a reason.  There is something about your company that allows it to shine above all else.  And Hero let’s us zero in on that so we can ensure what works for you now will only make you better in the years to come.

Let’s be real for a second

Stout Heart is a full-service agency. We want to help our partners grow. And we know what that takes… namely money. You have to spend it to make it. So our focus is where that money gets spent. Hero allows us to focus our energy on what makes you different. Stout Heart creates stunning websites, as do a lot of other agencies out there. But a stunning website does not make you different anymore, we hate to break it to you. So all we’ve done is create a way to design and build stunning websites in the most efficient way possible so that we can make your marketing budget work the best it can for your company.

So let me ask you one question, because the second you contact us it’s the first thing we’re going to ask anyway: What makes you different? We already know what makes us different, and we’re ready to put it to work for you.