While many studies have shown the importance of social media for SMB marketing efforts, specifically Facebook, there appears to be a population of "early adopters" that are engaged in paid opportunities on these sites. According to a new study from LSA research partner Thrive Analytics, 19% of SMBs said they have paid for social media advertising.

With 70% of the SMBs surveyed saying that they utilize Facebook for marketing efforts, the conclusion is many of those who purchase ads are doing so on Facebook. However, the vast majority of SMBs on Facebook have not done anything with Facebook Ads.

With 45+ million active SMBs and 2.5 million advertisers per Facebook’s official figures (9/15), that’s only about 5% or 6% penetration roughly speaking (not all Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs). In other words, Facebook still has a huge opportunity to convert SMBs with Facebook pages into active advertisers.