Acquisition-Only Marketing is funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0006, within the Corporate Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
Scientific Definition
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
Plain-English Definition
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
Feynman Explanation
The leaky bucket has a CMO and a head count.
Core Principle
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
Mechanisms
Pending editorial review.
Funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Inputs (Triggers)
Pending editorial review.
Outputs (Behaviors)
Pending editorial review.
Behavioral Signature
The leaky bucket has a CMO and a head count.
Examples
- Companies with 130% churn proudly hiring more SDRs.
- Vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics.
Pending editorial review.
Original analysis from The Incentives Lab — how this element behaves inside real payoff structures.
Why this element matters to incentive design
The mistake with this element is treating it as irrationality. It is almost always a rational response to a payoff nobody wrote down. The mechanism underneath it is straightforward: funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value. You can recognize it in the field by its signature: the leaky bucket has a CMO and a head count. Every element in the Incentives dimension changes the perceived payoff of an action before the action happens, which is exactly where incentive design has leverage.
How it gets exploited
Left undesigned, vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics. It is amplified whenever vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics. Inside organizations that shows up as vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics. The pattern is the same one Goodhart's Law describes: the measurable proxy attracts the effort, and the purpose behind it quietly loses funding.
How the Lab designs around it
The redesign move is to net-revenue retention as primary growth KPI. The leverage is not in explaining the behavior to people. It is in changing what the behavior earns.
Famous Experiments
Pending editorial review.
Design Principles
- Net-revenue retention as primary growth KPI.
Measurement Approaches
Pending editorial review.
Evidence
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
The Perverse Incentive Lens™
How this behavior is exploited — and how to redesign around it.
- Net-revenue retention as primary growth KPI.
Pending editorial review.
Pending editorial review.
Interactive Mini Network
Click any neighbor to re-center the graph and follow the threads of connection.
Knowledge Graph Neighbors
Auto-linked to the rest of the Human Behavior Taxonomy by family, domain, dimension, and shared keywords.
Earn-outs designed to retain founders often demotivate the team they bought.
Cuts that lift margin this quarter erode product quality and brand equity over years.
Narrowly tied bonuses get gamed; people optimize the metric, not the underlying goal.
Re-hires often get raises larger than internal promotions.
Pay tied to stock price encourages short-term price management.
CEO pay tied to size rewards deal-making even when acquisitions destroy value.
Sales forecasts under-set to ensure attainment bonus.
Capital tied to growth rates funds unsustainable scaling and unit-economics denial.
Managers measured by team size grow teams beyond need.
Awards reward visible novelty; quiet excellence goes unrecognized.
Innovation programs designed to signal innovation, not to produce it.
Managers hoard talent; cross-team mobility dies.
Where Acquisition-Only Marketing is cited in the corpus
Essays, field guides, and diagnostics from The Incentives Lab that apply this element.
- Field guideIncentives: definition, types, examples
The parent field guide for this element.
- ReferenceThe laws of incentives
Goodhart, Campbell, and the Cobra Effect.
- CourseIncentives 101
The free ten-part primer on reading a payoff structure.
- ReferenceThe Periodic Table of Human Behavior
The full 1,267-element map this page belongs to.
Questions about Acquisition-Only Marketing
- What is Acquisition-Only Marketing?
- Acquisition-Only Marketing is funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value. It sits in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™ as element HBT-INC-0006, within the Corporate Perverse Pattern family. The core principle: funnels rewarded for new logos under-invest in retention and lifetime value. In incentive terms, it matters because it changes the payoff people perceive before they choose — which means it can be designed for, or exploited.
- What is an example of Acquisition-Only Marketing?
- Vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics. The Incentives Lab catalogs everyday, organizational, and historical instances of this element on its Human Behavior Taxonomy™ page (HBT-INC-0006).
- How is Acquisition-Only Marketing exploited?
- Vanity-funnel KPIs ignore unit economics.
- How do you design around Acquisition-Only Marketing?
- Net-revenue retention as primary growth KPI.
- Which behavioral dimension does Acquisition-Only Marketing belong to?
- Acquisition-Only Marketing is classified in the Incentives dimension (INC) of the Human Behavior Taxonomy™, family "Corporate Perverse Pattern", class "Perverse Incentive". Its permanent identifier is HBT-INC-0006 and its evidence grade is C.