Will Facebook help you sell beer? It sure will, just ask the number three craft brewer in America, New Belgium Brewing. Located in Fort Collins, Colorado, New Belgium has grown over the past twenty years to become a staple for microbrew drinkers with their Fat Tire line of beers.

Currently the Microbrewer has over 400,000 fans on Facebook and spent about $230,000 on social media advertising this past year. This seems good on the surface but how much of that presence is translating into sales? To find out the brewery commissioned a survey of Facebook and found that they were getting more than a pretty good return on investment.

The results of the survey suggest that each fan spends about $260 per year on New Belgium products. That totals well over $50 million in sales last year just from Facebook fans alone. So where do they go from here? I guess it would be safe to say they will be spending a lot more on social media and internet-based advertising.

For comparison basis let’s look closer at New Belgium’s 400,000 Facebook fans. Boston Lager’s Sam Adams Beer has 138,000 fans on Facebook and Sierra Nevada has about 134,000. This is interesting because both Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams have national distribution while New Belgium is only available in 28 of the 50 states. I think that’s impressive and it sure speaks to what you can accomplish when you focus you advertising budget and other resources. I would be curious to know what these other two craft brewers spend for advertising on social media.