What’s the value of a Facebook Fan? – a question we are asked every day. Savvy marketers continue to invest substantial sums in building a presence on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.  They clearly see the Return on Investment (ROI), and we want to help you understand some of the reasons why.  So we developed the first-ever published Facebook fan valuation (also covered in this Adweek article)

According to our research a Facebook Page with 1 million fans is worth a minimum of $3.6 million in earned media annually. Honestly that’s just the tip of the iceberg as I’ll explain.

Let’s explore how we developed the Fan valuation.

Vitrue manages over 45 million fans and sampled data across varying pages from digital entertainment to retail to B2B to CPG to publishers to quick serve restaurants—in order to determine a wall post impression to Fan ratio. In other words, how many impressions can a single wall post receive? To our surprise we learned the average was approximately 1:1 (0.96:1 to be exact).

This means our 1 million Fan Facebook Page can average 1 million impressions with a single post to the wall. Factor frequency; a two post per day strategy would garner approximately 60 million impressions per month. Now here’s a metric all marketers are familiar with – we’ve been buying impressions since the dawn of the Internet.

These impressions are practically free, similar to earned media – that we are all familiar with. So our last step is to place a CPM value to our earned media. We factored a very conservative $5 CPM – how much would you pay for highly targeted impressions?

This final assumption gives our 1 million fan page $300,000 in earned media per month or $3.6 million annually.

1M impressions x 2 posts x 30 days = 60M impressions
60M impressions / 1000 x $5 CPM = $300,000


So there you have it: a simple valuation using metrics every marketer is familiar with. But that’s not all. Facebook wall posts have social engagement such as clicks, comments, likes, plays and shares. Wall Apps such as a coupon or a poll offer even greater levels of engagement. Brands engaging their Fans stand to earn much more value, potentially doubling or tripling these estimates.

Are you feeling short on fans? I hope this simple valuation helps you see the importance of a Facebook Fan acquisition strategy. One of the fastest ways to grow your Fan base is with Facebook Ads. You can also leverage Fan exclusive content/offers and deploy engaging apps.

Are you lacking a daily wall post strategy? Are your posts garnering maximum engagement? Vitrue works with marketers large and small to maximize ROI from the Facebook wall. The Vitrue SRM (Facebook publishing system) enables your marketing team to create and schedule a daily wall post strategy. Marketers can create eye-popping posts with video, images, audio and even apps that will maximize your Fan engagement. Comprehensive reporting gives you realtime metrics on clicks, comments, likes, plays, shares and app engagements.

Are you maximizing your ROI on Facebook? What strategies are you using to grow your Fan base? What’s your posting frequency? Leave a comment and join the conversation.