According to Hubspot, B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don't. That's just one of the takeaways in a new report titled Overcoming 4 Common B2B Lead Generation Mistakes, from SIIA member Randall Reilly, a publisher and marketing services company in the trucking field.

It's interesting that four of the Models of Excellence I've interviewed recently—these are companies using data in new ways that SIIA is featuring at our upcoming Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS)—all prominently mentioned their blog to me. Yet I doubt that all publishers have blogs, and if they do, post on a regular basis. (Randall Reilly has a good blog.)

Here are 10 other takeaways from this report:

1. Be compelling. Awareness and interest are not the same thing. "Remember, targeting, layering, and filtering your audience is all for naught if you don't give people a reason to care or click!" the reports says. "Your content has to be compelling enough to inspire people to act, and motivate them to raise their hand in some way."

2. Find the two or three channels or platforms that work for you. According to Blue Nile Research, 76% of B2B buyers use three or more channels to gather information when researching a purpose. "So it's unwise to commit to just one channel," writes Randall Reilly. "Try to decipher how (and where) people are most likely to find you."

3. Test the resources available to reach your customers. This includes data, automation, predictive analytics, and "Google's recently rolled out cross-device retargeting capabilities. Just about every channel offers analytics so we can crunch numbers and see what's working." Just be consistent with your messaging.

4. Make sure the conversions you're after align with your goals and capacity. Whether it's a white paper download, a renewal, clicks on a conference page or webinar sign-ups, your goals should be reflected by your communications and outreach. "Paid search is still critically important as well," the report says. "It's estimated that well over 90% of all online experiences begin with a search engine."

5. Experiment with Facebook. More than 30 billion pieces of content are shared on the network each month, including tons of video through YouTube. I'm hearing a lot about Facebook Live and will be writing about this in the coming week. Regardless of how you feel about social media, Facebook has become too big to ignore.

6. Create customer support mechanisms to ensure that any questions will be answered in a timely manner. The paper cites an eConsultancy finding that 83% of consumers need some degree of customer support when making a purchase online.

7. Track various metrics. Conversion rates are fine but don't tell the whole story. Which emails are getting clicks? What are your bounce rates? How are your year-by-year comparisons? "And don't underestimate the lead gen potential of gating your content," they write.

8. Segment your audience. "Whether you divvy up your audience based on demographics, purchase/browser history, job history, brand affinity, or another measurement is up to you," the report says. "[But] anything you can do to personalize, segment, and nurture prospects in a thoughtful, no-pressure way is lead generation gold."

9. Add remarketing tags to your website. This enables site visitors to see your ads later on. According to Google AdWords, "the tag is a short snippet of code that adds your website visitors to remarketing lists; you can then target these lists with your ads. If your website has a Google Analytics tag, you can use this tag instead and skip adding the AdWords remarketing tag."

10. Look into marketing automation software. According to Annuitas Group, "Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a huge increase in qualified leads."

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 and SIIA in 2013 as editorial director…