How much is a member of your company’s Facebook fan club really worth to your business?

Marketers at Vitrue calculated the average value of company Facebook fans by taking the number of “looks” fans give a company per month on the social media site and calculating how much it would’ve cost the company in traditional marketing to garner that same number of looks elsewhere.

Result: For big businesses — those with a Facebook fan base of 1 million-plus — the return is $3.60 per customer over the course of a year.

Of course most companies won’t have 1 million Facebook followers, but the study serves as a good starting point for organizations looking to gauge what their Facebook efforts are really worth.

Here’s how the marketers at Vitrue broke the figures down:

• A business with 1 million Facebook fans that posts twice a day garners 60 million impressions each month on average on its own news feed.
• Based on a cost of $5 per 1,000 impressions, those 60 million visitors would generate about $300,000 per month in “media value” (what companies would spend elsewhere to get the same exposure).
• Multiply the $300,000 monthly figure by 12 months and you get $3.6 million.
• Break down that $3.6 million among 1 million fans and you arrive at the $3.60 per fan figure.

Researchers were quick to add that this formula doesn’t factor in brand recognition, which could spur additional revenue.

Tags: Facebook, fans, social media, traditional marketing, Vitrue