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Without realizing it, you may already be marketing your practice. Ads in the yellow pages, conducting seminars or announcing a new partner to your practice are just a few marketing techniques you probably have tried. However, in order to fully create a practice development program, you will have to devise a budget as well as a marketing plan.

Creating a budget

The rule of thumb for your practice development plan is to allocate an annual budget based on five to eight percent of your annual gross revenue. But if your practice has never engaged in any type of market research or has never created or implemented a practice development plan, your initial budget should be about ten percent of your annual gross revenue.

Your costs will vary depending on the following factors:

* The aggressiveness of your competitors in marketing their practices and what you need to do to

   offset their efforts.

* The age of your practice. An established practice will not require as much development as a new one.

* New services you might be offering or new locations that might be opening at the same time you

   want to market your practice.

* The need for crisis marketing due to an incident that had a negative impact on your practice.

When reviewing your budget, remember some of the smaller steps you have already taken to develop your practice, such as placing ads in the yellow pages. These are probably listed in your phone budget, since the charge appears on your telephone bill. Move this expense over to your practice development budget. The same goes for printed materials like business cards, newsletters, announcements, etc. These are all part of developing your practice.

Once you have itemized the expenses, backtrack and list all the practice development activities you performed during the last year. This list should include:

* Announcing a new partner or location.

* Entertaining referring physicians and/or professional colleagues.

* Giving gifts to referral sources.

* Lecturing and public speaking engagements.

* Joining community professional and social organizations.

* Sponsoring a cause.

* Additional activities that your staff has engaged in, like representing you at a health fair or visiting

   hospital patients.

In addition to these items, any form of advertising, public relations or relationship marketing should also be included.

From your budget and your list of past practice development activities, you should be able to implement a plan that works. You will need to put a significant amount of time into market research and demographic analysis of both patients and your competitors. This will help a great deal in figuring out who and where your target audience is and who else is trying to market toward them.

With a strong practice development plan, you have the potential to increase your connection to patients and referring physicians.