The two most important steps in application of the homotopy perturbation method are to construct a suitable homotopy equation and to choose a suitable initial guess. The homotopy equation should be such constructed that when the homotopy parameter is zero, it can approximately describe the solution property, and the initial solution can be chosen with an unknown parameter, which is determined after one or two iterations. This paper suggests an alternative approach to construction of the homotopy equation with an auxiliary term; Dufing equation is used as an example to illustrate the solution procedure.