Build a KPI Tree From a Single Business Goal

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Analytics & Attribution

CoreBuild the Asset· 45 minutes

Snowflake

Objective: Given Snowflake's stated Q3 business goal, build a full KPI tree: one North Star KPI, 2-3 leading indicators, and one health metric, each tagged to its funnel stage and SMART-tested.

You're a growth marketer at Snowflake. Leadership just set a Q3 goal: 'reduce CAC for the self-serve data-cloud tier from $340 to $250.' You need a KPI tree the whole team can work from.

Use the lesson's North Star / Leading Indicators / Health Metric framework and funnel-stage categories to build a complete, SMART-tested KPI tree.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeBuild and score the KPI tree

Free, sufficient for a tree of 6-8 KPIs

Looker Studio(optional)

FreeTurn the finished tree into a live-tracked dashboard afterward

Free tool for the next step once the KPI tree is defined

The process

3 steps

Step 01 of 03

How Many KPIs Should You Track?

A KPI tree has 1 North Star KPI (defines success), 2-3 Leading Indicators (predict the North Star early), and 1 Health Metric (a guardrail).

Given Snowflake's goal (cut self-serve CAC from $340 to $250), what's the single North Star KPI, and what 2-3 leading indicators would move first if CAC is about to drop?

Google Sheets— A tree diagram or indented list: North Star at top, leading indicators below it, health metric off to the side.

Procedure

Write the North Star KPI and its numeric target
List 2-3 leading indicators that would move before CAC does
Add 1 health metric that guards against a bad optimization

Sample output

NORTH STAR: Self-serve CAC ($340 -> $250 by Sept 30)
LEADING INDICATORS: Organic conversion rate (trial-to-paid), Free-tier-to-paid upgrade rate, Cost per qualified trial signup
HEALTH METRIC: 30-day churn rate on new self-serve accounts (guards against buying cheap, low-quality signups)

Healthy

Every leading indicator has a believable causal path to the North Star; the health metric would catch a CAC 'win' that's actually just acquiring worse customers.

Unhealthy

The tree lists 6 leading indicators with no clear priority, or has no health metric at all.

What this means

A KPI tree with no health metric can hit its North Star by quietly damaging something else, like customer quality.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
CAC is improving but nobody is watching a guardrail metric	Add a health metric before reporting the CAC win as a success	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 03

The Four KPI Categories Marketers Use

Every KPI maps to a funnel stage: awareness, consideration, conversion, or retention. Knowing the stage tells you which lever to pull.

Tag each KPI in your tree from Step 1 with its funnel stage. Does the tree cover more than one stage, or is it all bunched in conversion?

Google Sheets— Add a 'Funnel Stage' column next to each KPI from Step 1.

Procedure

Tag each KPI with its funnel stage
Check whether awareness or consideration stages are missing entirely
Note which stage has no KPI, since that's a blind spot

Sample output

Self-serve CAC -> Conversion
Organic conversion rate -> Conversion
Free-tier-to-paid upgrade rate -> Conversion
Cost per qualified trial signup -> Consideration
30-day churn rate -> Retention
BLIND SPOT: No Awareness-stage KPI in this tree

Healthy

The tree at least acknowledges which funnel stages it does and doesn't cover, even if this quarter's goal is conversion-focused.

Unhealthy

Nobody notices the tree only covers 1 of 4 funnel stages, so an upstream awareness problem goes undiagnosed for months.

What this means

A KPI tree built entirely around one funnel stage will hit a ceiling it can't explain once the upstream stage becomes the real constraint.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
A funnel stage has zero KPIs on the tree	Flag it as a known blind spot in the KPI doc, even if you don't build a chart for it yet	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 03 of 03

How to Set a Good KPI

A KPI must be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). A KPI that fails any of the five tests is a wish, not a KPI.

Run the SMART test on your North Star KPI and each leading indicator from Step 1. Which one fails, and what's missing?

Google Sheets— Add 5 checkbox columns (S/M/A/R/T) next to each KPI.

Procedure

Check each KPI against all 5 SMART letters
Flag any KPI missing a deadline or a number
Rewrite the failing KPI so it passes all 5

Sample output

Cost per qualified trial signup: S-yes M-yes A-yes R-yes T-NO (no deadline) -> Rewrite: 'Cut cost per qualified trial signup to $40 by Sept 30.'

Healthy

Every KPI on the final tree has a number and a deadline attached, not just a direction ('improve X').

Unhealthy

A KPI ships as 'increase qualified trials' with no number or date, so nobody can say whether it succeeded.

What this means

The Time-bound and Measurable letters are the two most commonly skipped, and skipping either turns a KPI back into a wish.

So what do I do about it?

Symptom	Action	Effort
A KPI has no deadline	Add the specific date before the tree goes to leadership	5 min

YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

A complete KPI tree (1 North Star, 2-3 leading indicators, 1 health metric) with every KPI tagged by funnel stage and SMART-tested.

See a reference example

Sample output

Zendesk, KPI tree (excerpt)

NORTH STAR: Support-to-upsell conversion rate (8% -> 12% by Q4)
LEADING INDICATORS: CSAT on upsell-eligible tickets, Time-to-first-response on enterprise tier
HEALTH METRIC: Ticket reopen rate (guards against rushing tickets to hit response-time targets)

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Tree has exactly 1 North Star, 2-3 leading indicators, and 1 health metric
Every KPI is tagged with a funnel stage
Every KPI passes all 5 SMART checks after revision