How Much is One Facebook Fan Worth?

Written by Jeff Bullas - View Comments
Categories: Facebook, Facebook Marketing


The equation for on-line stores in essence is quite simple – “more traffic equals more sales“! The reality for other brands is that it is not so easy to measure that sales benefit so directly but more traffic is where you have to start. If no one is finding your website or blog it is very hard to start engaging with your prospects and begin the process of selling them any products or services. How Much is One Facebook Fan Worth

The ongoing challenge is how to drive that traffic to the website. Traffic can be generated through many means, it might be from search engine optimization (SEO), email marketing, Google Adwords or even a social media marketing program on Facebook.

Why Acquire Facebook Likes?

Acquiring Facebook “likes” has become the major goal of many social media marketing efforts. There is very good reason for this because  after a fan has liked your company’s page any information or links posted will be placed into the users and friends Facebook streams increasing traffic and brand awareness.

This is good to know but what is that Fan worth in creating an increase in actual traffic to a website?

What is a Facebook Fan Worth?

A recent study by Hitwise in the UK has revealed that a Facebook fan is worth 20 additional visits per year to an on-line stores.

What is a Facebook Fan worth for an Online Store

The figure of 1 fan = 20 extra visits to a website uses a unique methodology that combines Hitwise data with data from Techlightenment. They took the top 100 retailers ranked in the Hitwise Shopping and Classifieds category and benchmarked visits to those websites against the number of fans those brands had on their Facebook page. They then also looked at the propensity for people to search for those retail brands after a visit to Facebook.

What is a Facebook Fan Worth In Hard Cash?

All good on-line retailers know their ratios and will know how many sales they will achieve  for every 100 or 1,000 visitors to the web site. From there it is easy to calculate the direct cash benefit in cold hard sales.

It will vary from store to store depending on conversion rates, average sale values and industry benchmarks. If your ratio was an average sale of $20 for every 100 visits then each new Facebook fan would be worth $4 in additional revenue per year. That starts to put some perspective on the cold hard cash you may be missing out on by not having a Facebook presence or active marketing campaign to increase your Facebook likes.

Eventbrite (an on-line ticketing company) calculated that for them a Facebook like is worth $1.34.

So there you have it. A Facebook fan is actually bankable.

Do you have a Facebook page and are you building your likes?

More Reading

Image by Brooks Elliott



Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
  • http://cribbnotes.wordpress.com/2011/07/31/whats-a-facebook-fan-worth/ what’s a facebook fan worth? « cribbnotes

    [...] An article on jeffbullas.com takes a stab at this questions…A recent study by Hitwise in the UK has revealed that a Facebook fan is worth 20 additional visits per year to an on-line stores. All good on-line retailers know their ratios and will know how many sales they will achieve for every 100 or 1,000 visitors to the web site. From there it is easy to calculate the direct cash benefit in cold hard sales. It will vary from store to store depending on conversion rates, average sale values and industry benchmarks. If your ratio was an average sale of $20 for every 100 visits then each new Facebook fan would be worth $4 in additional revenue per year. That starts to put some perspective on the cold hard cash you may be missing out on by not having a Facebook presence or active marketing campaign to increase your Facebook likes. Eventbrite (an on-line ticketing company) calculated that for them a Facebook like is worth $1.34. Full article from jeffbullas.com [...]

  • http://www.automarketingblog.com Christopher Baccus

    Interesting read on a very controversial subject going back to when Vitrue tried to give fans a $3.60 per fan value in early 2010. I tend to look at what value we receive from a message or category of messages. The type of content a page provides has a big impact on how effective the page is and hence how effective its value becomes. 

    Also, I do disagree with one issue in your post, “after a fan has liked your company’s page any information or links
    posted will be placed into the users and friends Facebook streams
    increasing traffic and brand awareness.” This is not entirely true.  Now that we see per post impressions on Facebook and can also look at a monthly active fan number, you can get an idea of a post’s reach which is definitely not the total fan number and also get an idea of how many fans are truly seeing content from your page. Most people assume it is all of the fans one has acquired, but that is far from the truth and considerably lower.  I wonder if the value of an “active fan” would be a better indicator of value and we all instead focus on growing active fans, not just a page’s likes.

    Thanks for sharing the study from the UK.

    Respectfully,

    Christopher Baccus
    Exec Director of Digital & Social Media
    AT&T

  • http://techmagsocial.com/2011/08/01/how-much-is-one-facebook-fan-worth/ How Much is One Facebook Fan Worth? « Techmag Core Social Server

    [...] Read the rest of the article here:  http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/08/01/how-much-is-one-facebook-fan-worth/ [...]

  • http://jeffbullas.com Jeff Bullas

    Thanks for the comment Christopher.Yes, you are correct, not every update appears in the fan’s streams ( I didn’t go into Facebook’s edge rank algorithm in the post..in the interest of simplicity). Growing active fans that engage as much as possible is what the Facebook page should be designed for.

  • http://materialsdave.com/how-much-is-one-facebook-fan-worth How much is one Facebook fan worth? – materialsdave.com

    [...] How much is one Facebook fan worth? Posted on August 2, 2011 by materialsdave How much is one Facebook fan worth? [...]

  • http://excapite.wordpress.com/2011/08/03/theres-no-business-like-so-biz/ There’s no business like So.Biz « excapite

    [...] and profitable So.Biz strategy is a million miles away from the world of calculating the value of Facebook Fans or Likes or  Tweets and Followers on Twitter. It’s all about using social media to drive customers to [...]

  • http://www.bearingpartnership.com/blog/2011/08/5%c2%b0-of-august-house-of-fraser-channel-4-telegraph-amscreen-barclays-aegis-the-body-shop-hearst-first-direct-the-economist-lvmh/ 5° of August | House of Fraser | Channel 4 | Telegraph | Amscreen | Barclays | Aegis | The Body Shop | Hearst | First Direct | The Economist |LVMH| | The 6 Degrees Blog

    [...] all comes as Jeff Bullas writes an article asking, How much is One Facebook Fan Worth? Social agency comScore may have the answer as they have released a social media tool this week, [...]

  • http://www.mrlukeabbott.com/marketing/100-facebook-marketing-tips-2/ 100 Facebook Marketing Tips | MrLukeAbbott.com

    [...] people who aren’t fans and don’t buy your brand at all. Then of course fans will spend more. A Facebook Fan is also worth 20 extra visits your brands website per [...]

  • Anonymous

    Good post – back in January it was worth $50 to women’s clothing retailer New York and Company - http://bit.ly/o0i67T 

  • Htgillis

    Great article Jeff, once again giving the internet world cold hard facts so we know and understand what a “LIKE” is worth and how important it is to go out and make an effort to get “likis” to you business facebook fan page – thanks again for educating me.
    Thomas Gillis
    nonprofit / founder / http://www.Alcoholicshare.org

  • http://www.unleashwebaccess.com/2011/11/how-much-is-a-facebook-fan-worth/ How much is a Facebook Fan worth? » Unleash Web Access

    [...] Jeff Bullas, JeffBullas.com: How Much is One Facebook Fan Worth? [...]

  • http://realtylab.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/the-friday-five-for-december-23/ The Friday Five for December 23 | REALTY LAB
blog comments powered by Disqus