When setting your marketing budget, you need to align it with your growth objectives. If you’re in a competitive market, then under-spending on marketing isn’t just a missed opportunity; it’s a dangerous trap that could stunt your practice's potential.
Step 1: Define Your Growth Goals
Patient Acquisition Goals – How many new patients do you need each month to hit your targets?
Location Expansion Goals – Are you planning to expand? How much will that take in marketing to drive awareness in new areas?
Brand Building Goals – If you’re looking to build a recognizable brand and market your practice, this will require consistent marketing efforts beyond patient acquisition.
Step 2: Determine Your Revenue Goals
Once you know your growth targets, you can reverse-engineer how much revenue you want to generate, and from there, set your marketing budget. Generally, for aggressive growth, you should expect to spend anywhere from 10% to 15% of collections on marketing.
Let’s say you plan to hit $5 million in annual collections. 10% of that would mean a marketing budget of $500,000 per year, or about $41,667 per month. This budget allows you to fund consistent paid ads, organic SEO efforts, social media marketing, and other outreach that will bring in a high volume of new patients.