Some of your marketing materials exist to draw in new leads. Some exist to prevent potential leads from ending their exploration of your company.

Think of it like dating. There will be some obvious things that attract you to another person—maybe it’s their smile, or the energy they bring to a room, or how you instantly have fun together. But there could also be some potential “red flags”–and when you’re first dating, you are on the lookout for those, too. Are they impatient and rude with the wait staff at a restaurant? Do their friends seem sketchy? Are they too needy? Too distant?

Sometimes, parts of your marketing are there simply to demonstrate that there are no “red flags”–you do them to keep your clients dating you and your brand (so to speak). But that is a different exercise from doing the things that actually attract new clients to you (or deepen the relationship with existing ones). The amount of time, money, and effort you put into any piece of marketing depends on whether it is a qualifier or a lead source.

Let’s take an example: Social media. We’ll use LinkedIn specifically.

I’ve spoken with several people who use LinkedIn as a qualifier when they are already considering doing business with a company. They want to see that the company is legitimate, that there are employees who actively engage. They want to see the company culture.

They want to see that, if they have an issue, there is a team of people nearby that they can speak with—not just some faceless agency with a server in Kiev and a customer service pool in Bangalore.

If that’s you—if your clients only care about your LinkedIn page because they are looking for red flags—that tells you how you should approach your social media marketing. You probably don’t need to share a lot of educational content from a mix of industry sources, following the 80/20 rule. You don’t need to doggedly keep a strict social media calendar. And you certainly don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on social campaigns “just to have your name out there.”

What you do need is someone with a camera to snap a few pics at your company events, and someone else with a knack for hashtags to do the posting.

This isn’t to say that there are no brands that use social media for lead generation. Some do, as there are products that do well in that channel. The point is to find which purpose this channel serves for you, and allocate accordingly. If your customers only see social media as a qualifier, put the effort in to capture your culture…then spend the rest of your marketing dollars elsewhere.

Another example: Your website. If you sell via your website, that’s important. And if you use your website to draw in prospects with content and build your mail list, that’s important, too. But for so many companies, the web site is just an electronic business card. If your customers only visit your website to see if you are legit, it’s a qualifier, not a lead generator. So treat it accordingly: Make sure it’s spruced-up and professional looking, and then let it do its job while you invest your marketing efforts elsewhere.

So many companies make the mistake of thinking their marketing materials are ineffective when really, they have been put to the wrong use. It might not be that your marketing agency was inept at social media marketing, but that your clients aren’t really using social media to find businesses they want to work with. It wasn’t that the website redo was poorly done; it’s that you spent thousands on a website redo when what you really wanted was lead gen activity—but your website is just a qualifier in the eyes of your market. The website prevents people from saying “no,” but it does not attract prospects in the first place. It doesn’t make the phone ring.

So how do you find out what counts as lead gen for your business, and what is only a qualifier? There is no “armchair” way to do it. You have to have conversations. Start with your best customers: How did they find you? What did they care about? What did they read? Who else did they consider? You’ll learn a lot from those customers. Then start baking this into your intake: Whenever you land a new client, ask them how they found you, what they read, and what they expect. You can even do this with prospects, if you feel comfortable.

Believe me—you will be surprised at what your clients cared about when they were searching, what they used to qualify you, and what did not matter at all. That is what should drive your marketing allocation.

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