How much does it cost to acquire a Facebook customer?

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Customer acquisition is one of the biggest challenges on Facebook.

Since Facebook shut down the flow of viral customers (or, as some call it, stopped the wall spam), companies have had to spend significant money on acquiring new users. Some reports suggest that Zynga is spending $100 million a year on Facebook marketing. (According to Raf Keustermans, former marketing director of Playfish).

But if you’re modelling a social game on Facebook, how much should you put in for customer acquisition?

Dallas Snell, co-founder and head of development at Richard Garriott’s Portalarium has an answer. He told AdAge:

“Last year, Mr. Snell said he could buy an ad for 15 cents to 20 cents a click, but now, those same ads are costing as much as $2 a click — and not getting much action. In the first six months of his game release, Mr. Snell said Portalarium spent around $50,000 on Facebook advertising.”

That’s $2 CPC, not per customer. So if you are only managing to convert 10% of clicks to players, your CPA is $20. And then you need to convert those people to payers…

(Interestingly, on the third page of the article, Dallas says that he spends $1 per paying customer on Facebook. Impressive, given the numbers above)

It’s pretty tough out there. If you need to spend that much money on marketing, you better have a good retention and monetisation strategy.

Otherwise, you’ll be pouring marketing money into a bottomless pit.

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