How do I know if my marketing actually matters?

Your work gets judged on vanity metrics, and underneath them you cannot tell whether you are truly building the brand or just adding to the noise. That uncertainty is uncomfortable, and it is also a good sign. It means you care about real impact, not just the numbers that are easy to show. The likes and impressions are not the same as value, and part of you already knows it. Real impact is quieter and slower, whether people remember you, trust you, choose you when it counts. Those things are harder to measure, which is exactly why the shallow metrics get all the attention. Do not let the ease of measuring noise convince you that noise is what matters. Start separating the two on purpose. For your next effort, name in advance what real success would look like beyond the clicks, then check honestly whether it happened. It is harder than reading a dashboard. But that habit is how you find out if the work is building something, and how you stop mistaking motion for meaning.