How Much is One Facebook Fan Worth?

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. 

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.

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

• Is This the Holy Grail of Facebook Marketing?
• How To Take Your Company Facebook Page From Zero To 40,000 Fans
• 50 Fascinating Facebook facts and Figures
• The 10 Best Facebook Marketing Campaigns
• How To Advertise On Facebook In Ten Minutes For Less Than $10 A Day In 10 Simple Steps
• 5 Ways To Improve Your Facebook Page Engagement with Fans
• How to Create a 5 Step Facebook Marketing Strategy for Your Blog
• Business Guide to Facebook

Image by Brooks Elliott