Marketing is not all about the “Buy” button. Content, PR, and community rarely generate sales here and now, but they build the most valuable things: reputation, recognition, and audience loyalty. It’s like training before a marathon: you don’t have a finish line yet, but you’re already building up your fitness.
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, content marketing can generate 3 times more leads at 62% lower costs than classical advertising. PR raises brand awareness to the level where you are recognized without a logo, and HigherLogic shows that active communities increase customer engagement by 21%.
And all this sounds good until a funder comes in with a direct question: “Where are the numbers?”
In order not to answer “this is a long-term investment” with a dreamy look out the window, you need KPIs, specific indicators that will prove that marketing without direct sales works, and works well.
KPIs for content and PR (image, visibility, trust)
Content and PR is a long game. The formula “poured – sold” does not work here, but they create an environment where sales become a natural consequence. To prove the effectiveness of these areas, measure not only “came and bought”, but also intermediate indicators that show how the brand is growing in the eyes of the audience.
Organic Search Traffic & Search Rankings
What it measures: How many people are coming from organic search and what positions your pages are ranking for keywords.
Why it matters: If articles, guides, and landing pages reach the top 10 of Google, it means that they work for recognition and trust, even without direct advertising.
Example: After launching a blog with 10 SEO-optimized articles, a SaaS company received +48% of organic traffic in 3 months and reduced the cost of a lead from $120 to $80 because customers came to them.
How to calculate: Google Analytics 4 + Google Search Console or Ahrefs/Semrush.
Impressions & Media Mentions
What it measures: The number of impressions in search, social media, news sites, and media mentions of the brand.
Why it matters: Even if a person doesn’t click, they remember the name. This works as a “soft warm-up” for the next time they see your offer, and the familiarity effect will kick in.
Example: A PR campaign in iGaming that resulted in only 5 major publications increased the number of branded queries on Google by 32% within a month.
How to calculate: Mention, Brand24, Meltwater, or even free Google Alerts.
Engagement Rate (likes, comments, shares)
What it measures: How much your content makes people engage with it.
Why it matters: A high ER means that the message has entered the emotional field of the audience, and even without a sale, you increase loyalty.
Example: The case of a fashion brand where a series of posts about the behind-the-scenes showed an ER 2.3 times higher than average, which led to +15% of sales in the next collection without additional advertising.
How to calculate: On social media through built-in analytics (Meta Insights, LinkedIn Analytics), on blogs through tools like Hotjar or Plausible.
Time on Page & Scroll Depth
What it measures: How much time a person spends on a page and what percentage of the content they view.
Why it matters: If a visitor spends 2-3 minutes on a page and reads 80% of the material, he is really interested. If it’s 20 seconds and 10%, the content doesn’t catch the eye or doesn’t meet expectations.
Example: A marketplace that rewrote the description of product categories in the “useful guide” format increased the average time on the page from 45 seconds to 2 minutes, and the conversion rate by 12%.
How to calculate: Google Analytics 4, Hotjar, Crazy Egg.
Share of Voice (SOV)
What it measures: The share of mentions of your brand in a niche relative to competitors.
Why it matters: It’s like “who shouts the loudest in the market”. If SOV grows, you occupy a larger part of the media space, and this directly affects recognition.
Example: In the crypto niche, a brand that raised SOV from 8% to 14% in six months due to active publications and collabs increased organic traffic by 60% without additional advertising budget.
How to count: Brandwatch, Meltwater, Sprout Social, or even a simpler Mention with competitive monitoring.
Leadpanda’s tip: these five KPIs work best when combined. For example, if SOV and the number of media mentions are growing, but ER is falling, it means that you are being seen more, but your content is not catchy. If Organic Traffic, ER, and Time on Page grow together, you don’t just “glow”, but actually hold attention and warm the audience.
KPIs for the community (engagement, support, advocacy)
Community is not just a chat room for memes and “good morning”. It’s your free customer support department, an incubator for brand advocates, and a platform where the audience generates content. But to prove the value of the community to a founder or marketing director, you need numbers, not “the atmosphere is cool there.”
Member Engagement & Active Members
What it measures: The number of active members and the level of their interaction (posts, comments, reactions, participation in events).
Why it matters: A large database without activity is a dead number in CRM. Loyalty is born in a dialog, not in a contact list.
Example: A SaaS company raised the share of active users from 12% to 28% simply by launching weekly AMA sessions with the product manager. This increased retention by 15%.
How to calculate: Built-in platform analytics (Facebook Groups Insights, Slack Analytics, Discord Insights) or specialized tools like Orbit, CommonRoom.
Referral Traffic from Community
What it measures: How many visits to the site or landing pages come from the community.
Why it matters: This is direct evidence that the community works as a warm-up channel – participants don’t just read, but go to the brand’s internal channels.
Example: A brand in the iGaming niche increased traffic to its blog by 37% by integrating preview articles and exclusive promos in the community’s Telegram chat.
How to count: UTM tags + Google Analytics 4 / Plausible / Matomo.
New Signups & Member Retention Rate
What it measures: The number of new members during the period and the percentage of those who remained active after 3-6 months.
Why it matters: An inflow without retention is like a bucket with a hole in it: the resources for attracting new members have been spent, but the effect is zero.
Example: An EdTech company increased retention from 42% to 68% by adding gamification and badges for community activity.
How to calculate: Built-in platform statistics + your own CRM or marketing automation (HubSpot, ActiveCampaign).
Leadpanda tip: Be sure to look at the relationship of these KPIs to sales. For example, if the activity in the community is growing and the referral traffic is falling, it means that the members are “cooking” inside, but not moving into the funnel. This is a signal to add more targeted triggers and content that motivates them to go further.
KPIs for overall brand value (imagination, trust, potential)
These indicators are like checking the “temperature” of the brand. They do not count clicks or leads, but answer the question: do people like us enough to talk about us, recommend us, and come back? If content, PR, and community are tools, then these KPIs show how well they play together.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
What it measures: The willingness of customers to recommend you to others. Usually through a simple question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” (scale from 0 to 10).
Why it matters: High NPS = you have not just customers, but brand advocates. Low = either the product is not up to par or the experience of interacting with the brand is lame.
Example: A SaaS platform raised its NPS from 42 to 67 by launching a personalized onboarding campaign and a “customer success” chat on Slack. This resulted in +20% upsell without additional advertising costs.
How to count: SurveyMonkey, Typeform, HubSpot Surveys, Delighted.
Brand Sentiment / Feedback Mentions
What it measures: The tone of brand mentions – positive, negative, neutral.
Why it matters: You can be loud, but if the majority of mentions are negative, you’re only adding fuel to the fire. Mood control helps to notice a crisis in time and correct the course.
Example: A fintech company noticed a sharp drop in positive sentiment by 18% after changes in tariffs. Thanks to this, it quickly introduced a bonus program and returned the indicator to the previous level in 2 weeks.
How to calculate: Brandwatch, Sprout Social, Meltwater, Mention, Google Alerts (for basic monitoring).
Leadpanda’s tip: keep these two metrics together with Share of Voice. If your share of voice is growing and the tone is consistently positive, you are not just visible, but also loved. This is the best foundation for any future campaign (even a sales campaign) to start with a head start.
KPIs as a marketing map without a “Buy”
Marketing that doesn’t sell directly is often underestimated. Content, PR, community, image activities, all of these work slowly but cumulatively. And if you don’t count them, there will always be someone in the company who will say: “Why are we spending the budget on this?”
KPIs are your armored arguments. They show that:
- content drives organic traffic and keeps attention;
- PR increases mentions and share of voice in the niche;
- Community works as a warm-up and retention channel;
- brand grows in recognition, loyalty and positive tone.
It’s like having a map and a compass: you can see where you’re going and quickly adjust your course if something goes wrong.
Leadpanda’s trick: choose 5-7 key KPIs from this list, link them to your business goals, and track them monthly. This way you can not only show that marketing without direct sales works, but also prove that it brings real business value.
Because at the end of the day, marketing is not about what you do, it’s about how you prove it works.
