Health, beauty and therapy businesses will often find themselves searching and searching for new clients and better ways to make money and stay afloat.

A great place to start is looking at the volunteer organizations in your community and how they raise funds.

Very often these organizations are cash strapped and very limited in how much they can spend on promoting themselves. Which means they need to learn how to make money off “the smell of an oily rag” so to speak! The means they are usually a great source of light-bulb-type ideas on how your business can get some extra income, without spending a fortune.

One of the biggest fundraisers a local organization can have is a raffle. And there’s absolutely no reason why a hair salon, therapy clinic, beauty salon or day spa can’t get new clients and make more money the same way.

So what is a raffle? A raffle is where your business offers to the customers a special package of treatments, services or retail products for a fraction of their value.

For example, if you run a beauty therapy salon you might package together a facial, manicure, pedicure, massage and body wrap. All together this treatment package might cost you $50 to do but its actually valued at $300.

So for your raffle, you charge your clients only $2 each per ticket. Both new, prospective clients and current, regular clients purchase lots of tickets because they love the treatments you’re offering and its fantastic value. For just $2 they could win a $300 therapy package.

Now the key is to sell more tickets than your cost. So if it costs you $50 to do all those treatments, you need to sell a minimum of 25 tickets.

And yup, you’ve probably guessed by now that every ticket you sell after those first 25, is pure profit you can put in your pocket!

If you’ve got a smaller budget or tighter purse strings, the best bet would be to start with a smaller package or even multiple small packages. You run a raffle one a week, one every two weeks, whatever the schedule you feel is best for your business. Then promote, promote, promote!

Your clients walk through the door and they see balloons, they see confetti, they see fairy lights and they’re immediately drawn to the basket you’ve made with all the vouchers in it. Then they see the small $2.00 price tag for the ticket to win the big package! After 20 or 30 customers buy the ticket for that package, your costs are paid for and all of the extra proceeds are going into your pocket as profit.

Raffles have been used by many businesses, organizations, and non-profit organizations for decades. In fact once you’ve done a few of these and you know you’re going to sell lots of tickets you could give a portion of the proceeds (after costs of course) away to charity. This would really show your clientele that you are in touch with the community.

If your salon, clinic or spa normally only holds five customers at a time everyone feels they have a huge chance of winning. Each of those people thinks that you're directing that spectacular giveaway toward them. They don’t think about the fact that 100 more people may come in during that week, and that each of those people have the same chance of getting that special package. All they know is that they are just spending $2 and they have a chance to receive a facial, sample products, a foot massage, a manicure (or what ever you're giving away) for a very small price.