Your head is about to get itchy. Really itchy. That’s because you’re about to discuss something over Monday Morning Coffee that nobody … I mean, NOBODY, wants to talk about.
It’s head lice. The fear of moms everywhere, this little parasite can turn a house upside-down like nothing else, except maybe a mouse infestation … eww.
If you’ve never had this chaos erupt in your home, you should know that it’s coming. Rarely does a family escape the discovery that their little darling in pigtails and Mary Janes is supporting a colony of minuscule, egg-laying beasts.
But it’s just part of life, right?
Ask the army of moms who rant about round after round of ineffective treatment before they finally went ape nuts and purged them from their home (and probably beefed up the tough ones for those of us further down the blood buffet).
Now that you’re appropriately paranoid, there’s some good news. There’s a solution for your misery, and it comes with a marketing lesson as icing on the cake.
Meet Megan Kluempers of Lice Centers of America in Arnold, Missouri, who provides a proprietary heat treatment, paired with a suffocating oil treatment. That, combined with the simple laundering of bedding, is guaranteed to solve your crisis, with a first-time success rate of 99.2%.
Ten days after treatment, you get a free follow-up check, and if you’re still harboring any bugs, re-treatment is free. That rarely happens, and if it does, it’s usually because a family ignored the advice to get the entire family screened at the initial appointment.
The treatment is effective, it’s not growing a crop of superbugs and while it is a bit pricey, any mom who has spent money and countless hours on ineffective shampoos and nit-picking will tell you it’s completely worth it.
What Lice Centers of America has mastered, along with their awesome, effective treatment, is emotional marketing. The locations are immaculate, with a bright white and green color scheme. Families battling lice want nothing more than to be clean.
Lice myths and facts are displayed in bold font on the walls, reassuring clients that this is not shameful, and you can trust the experts working there.
Kluempers also has great perspective on lice. She regularly assures parents, “This is the best worst thing that can happen to your child.” In other words, it’s not a chronic disease, it’s not a crippling mental health problem. It’s a few bugs in their hair, and there’s a solution.
Finally, there’s the guarantee that if it doesn’t work, they’re taking responsibility. It gives you peace of mind. They’ve got this, and you can go back to life. If, by some small chance, they didn’t get everything, you’re not doomed to weeks of nightly checks under a bright light with a painful metal comb.
It’s worth noting that if the price seems a bit intimidating, Lice Centers of America do offer products to be used at home, and if you have a Health Savings Account (HSA), it can be used to pay for services.
Wanting to keep the bugs at bay? For preventative insight, Kluempers notes that 98% of all lice are spread through head-to-head contact. What this means is that what used to be a nuisance normally reserved for the Happy Meal crowd is moving up to middle and high school. Teens putting their heads together to watch videos on a device or take a group selfie are ensuring that Lice Centers of America has no shortage of clients.
Go on, we know you’re dying to go look in the mirror just to make sure. When you’re ready to start thinking about how you can figure out what itch you need to scratch for your customers, contact us at SJC Marketing.