March 22, 2011

Finally, The True Value Of A Facebook Fan

In days of yore, people were consumed by questions about the existence of God, or the nature of the universe, or the fate of mankind. Today, however, we face a problem that is apparently even more vexing: What the heck is the value of a Facebook fan?

Based on the alarming amount of literature on the topic, this seems to be very nettlesome to today's highly sensitive marketing professionals.

I've been studying the methods of our industry's new oracles -- the data analysts -- and trying to apply their methods and their logic to the problem. 

And, good news. I think I've got the answer!

Here's what I've done. I've used real-world numbers, based on a real-world case history and come up with what I believe is an unassailable value for a Facebook fan.

I have tried to keep this mainstream by using one of the most famous brands in the world, and a very famous Facebook initiative to derive my value.

The formula I've used is a simple one highly favored by our data wizards. I've taken the total change in dollar sales since the Facebook program in question began, and I've divided it by the total number of Facebook fans that were acquired. That should give us a dollar value for each Facebook fan.

The case history I'm going to use is the Pepsi Refresh Project. According to Pepsi's marketing director  "the success has been overwhelming" so no one can accuse me of skewing the data.

The Pepsi Facebook page has acquired about 3.5 million fans as a result of the Refresh project. In the most recent year, during which the Refresh Project was ongoing, Pepsi sales dropped by about 350 million dollars.

Doing the math, we find that each Pepsi Facebook fan was worth about 100 dollars.

To Coke.

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