Disclosure and methodology
Kiin is a B2B paid media agency, we compete with Directive, and we are first on this list. We are also a fraction of their size, which is the honest frame for everything below: this page is written by a small specialist about a large generalist, and you should weigh it knowing that. Every fact about another agency was read from that agency’s own public material in September 2026, and where something is not stated the entry says so rather than guessing.
Scored on four things: whether the channels run as one programme with one budget owner, what gets measured, pricing transparency, and verifiable credentials. Not scored on size, awards or website design.
How to read any alternatives page, including this one. It was written by a competitor of the agency in the title. That is true of almost every page ranking for this search, and most of them do not say so. Check whether the incumbent is described accurately enough that you would recognise it, whether the page says where the incumbent is still the better choice, and whether the facts carry a date. If every line about the named agency is unflattering, you are reading an advert rather than a comparison.
Why people look for a Directive alternative
Directive is one of the largest B2B only performance agencies in the United States and the work is good. The reasons people search for an alternative are almost entirely structural.
No published pricing. Directive does not put numbers on its site. That is normal in this category, but it means qualifying yourself in or out takes several calls, and it is the single most common reason people go looking for a comparison page like this one.
Scale, and where you sit inside it. Directive states 100+ marketing strategists and 420+ brands served, with Amazon, Adobe, Cisco, Calendly and Uber Freight shown as clients. That is a real capability. It also sets the reference class. A $10,000 a month account inside an agency staffed for Adobe is a small account, and the people who presented in the pitch are unlikely to be the people in your weekly call.
Three divisions when you need one channel. Performance, Commerce and Communications cover content, paid media, performance creative, programmatic, RevOps, marketplace advertising, lifecycle, PR, influencer and social. If your spend is concentrated in LinkedIn and Google, you are buying access to a machine built much wider than your problem.
Vertical playbooks cut both ways. Technology, industrial and services playbooks mean a team that has seen your motion before. They can also mean a template. Worth asking in the pitch which parts of the plan were written for you.
Directive at a glance
| What Directive states | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2013, Irvine, California |
| Scale | 100+ marketing strategists, 420+ brands served, $1B+ revenue generated |
| Divisions | Performance, Commerce, Communications |
| Services | Content, paid media, performance creative, programmatic, RevOps, marketplace advertising, lifecycle, PR, influencer, paid and organic social |
| Verticals | Technology, industrial, services |
| Named clients | Amazon, Uber Freight, Calendly, Adobe, Cisco, WordPress |
| Pricing | Not published. No stated minimum |
Read from directiveconsulting.com on 29 September 2026. Scale claims are the agency’s own and we have not independently verified them.
Nine alternatives
1. Kiin — best if you want the people doing the work on the call
London, serving US, UK and EU. Eight people, three of them from LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, and the person who builds your campaigns is the person in your weekly. That is the entire argument for choosing us over an agency with 100+ strategists, and it is worth being blunt that it is an argument about size rather than about capability. $2,500 to $9,500 a month, published, no markup on media. Where Directive runs paid media as one division of three, we run LinkedIn deeply, use Google to capture the demand it creates, and feed engagement signals into outbound from one dataset. Benchmarks we quote come from a measured panel of 1,000+ advertiser accounts, not from our own client roster. Tradeoff: we are eight people with no programmatic desk, no commerce practice and no PR arm. If your plan needs marketplace advertising, lifecycle, influencer or paid social at Directive’s scale, we cannot staff it.
2. Refine Labs — best if the missing number is the price
Boston. B2B SaaS demand generation for Series B and beyond, and the one agency at this tier that puts its rate card on the website: paid media management from $14,000 a month on a six month minimum, full service with an embedded Director of Demand Generation from $26,000, creative only from $5,000, and a six week Revenue Performance Assessment at a flat $35,000. If what frustrated you about a Directive process was getting three calls deep before hearing a number, this is the direct remedy. Multi channel paid across LinkedIn, Google, Meta, YouTube, CTV and OOH. Tradeoff: the floor is real and deliberate. Below roughly $40,000 a month of media, a $14,000 management fee is the wrong shape whatever the quality of the work.
3. Powered by Search — best if paid alone has stopped compounding
Toronto. B2B SaaS focused, running SEO, AI and LLM search visibility, paid, digital PR, ABM, HubSpot RevOps and web as one stack, with a stated promise of 30% more sales ready opportunities in 90 days. Published results include $11.1M in SEO pipeline for a data privacy SaaS and 135% of a paid pipeline target for a cybersecurity SaaS. Directive does content and SEO too, but the centre of gravity there is paid performance; here it is genuinely the whole search surface, organic and answer engines included. Tradeoff: no published pricing, so you are back in the same discovery process, and you are buying a stack rather than a channel.
4. KlientBoost — best for accountability you can read before signing
California. 4.9 on Clutch from 405 reviews, states it hit 83% of client goals in Q2 2026 and adds resources free when pacing falls behind. The free marketing plan comes back with a fee attached to each recommendation, for example LinkedIn spend increase at $7,500 a month of management, which makes it the closest thing to indicative pricing in the US mid market. Paid search, paid social and conversion rate optimisation run together, and the published LinkedIn playbook covers list based targeting, frequency, thought leader ads and conversation ads rather than the usual surface material. Tradeoff: a large multi channel agency. LinkedIn is one line on the plan rather than the practice, which is the same structural issue you may be leaving Directive over.
5. Brainlabs — best for multi market media at genuine scale
Global, founded in London. A Test and Earn methodology with a logged repository of 2,500+ experiments, and a stated policy of fully transparent pricing with no hidden fees or principal media positions, which is a meaningful commitment in a category where arbitrage on media is common. Retail, financial services, travel, consumer tech, B2B SaaS and healthcare. If you are leaving Directive because you want more scale rather than less, this is the option that has it across more markets. Tradeoff: B2B SaaS is one sector among six, and the operating model is built for substantial multinational budgets. A single channel programme at $10,000 a month is not what this is for.
6. Transmission — best for enterprise B2B go to market across regions
Global, founded in London, describes itself as the largest independent B2B marketing agency. Strategy, creative, media and ABM run as one go to market programme, with enterprise technology clients including Qualcomm, and Reddit Gold partner status which almost no B2B agency holds. Publishes original buyer research rather than opinion pieces. The right substitution if Directive felt close but you need the programme to run across several regions and a full ABM motion. Tradeoff: enterprise scale brings enterprise minimums, and paid media sits inside a much larger programme rather than being the thing you are buying.
7. Ironpaper — best for six to eighteen month buying cycles
New York, founded 2003, around 70 people across the US. Built around the enterprise buying process rather than around a channel: buyer research, demand generation, content, paid media, sales enablement and reporting, aimed at companies whose deals move through a committee over a year. Reports qualified pipeline and hands sales the intelligence to work an account. Directive’s industrial vertical covers similar ground, but here the long cycle is the whole premise rather than one of three verticals. Tradeoff: programme led and content heavy. A company that wants a lean media specialist optimising weekly will find the shape too broad.
8. Walker Sands — best if awareness is the actual constraint
Chicago, founded 2001. Strategy and research, PR and influencer relations, creative and original research, paid media, SEO and GEO, and revenue operations including CRM and Clay integration. Named clients include John Deere, Paylocity, Semrush and Aspentech. Publishes its own B2B AI Search Visibility Benchmark and a Growth Maturity Assessment, which is real evidence in a category that mostly publishes opinion. If paid performance keeps getting more expensive because nobody in the category knows who you are, this is the combination Directive does not lead with. Tradeoff: breadth over channel depth, and a cost structure that matches a full service agency of this size.
9. Impactable — best for LinkedIn depth at a much lower budget
US. LinkedIn Ads at the core with paid search, programmatic retargeting and outreach around it, plus its own DemandSense platform. States $50M+ of B2B ad spend managed, a 5.0 Clutch rating and first independent LinkedIn CAPI certified partner status, with deep work in cybersecurity, SaaS and financial services. For a company whose LinkedIn programme is the whole plan and whose budget would make it a small account at Directive, this is a straight upgrade in attention. Tradeoff: the site was mid domain migration between August and September 2026, which is fair to ask about if you care how an agency runs its own house. Outside the core verticals the advantage narrows.
Side by side
| Agency | Best for | Publishes pricing | Rough size signal | Channel focus |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kiin | LinkedIn led programmes, senior attention | Yes, from $2,500 a month | 8 people | LinkedIn, then Google capture |
| Directive | Enterprise scale B2B performance | No | 100+ strategists | Multi channel, three divisions |
| Refine Labs | Series B+ demand programmes | Yes, from $14,000 a month | Mid size | Multi channel paid |
| Powered by Search | Organic, AI search and paid as one stack | No | Mid size | Search surface plus paid |
| KlientBoost | Goal accountability, indicative fees | Indicative | Large | Paid search, paid social, CRO |
| Brainlabs | Multi market media at scale | Principles only | Global | Multi channel media |
| Transmission | Enterprise B2B go to market | No | Global | Strategy, creative, media, ABM |
| Ironpaper | Long complex sales cycles | No | ~70 people | Demand generation and ABM |
| Walker Sands | Earned media plus demand | No | Large | PR, brand, demand |
| Impactable | LinkedIn depth at lower budgets | No | Specialist |
What the media costs, so you can size the fee against it
Agency fees only mean something next to the media they manage. Every cost figure on this page comes from our own panel: 1,000+ advertiser accounts, 22,942 campaigns and $79 million of measured LinkedIn spend across 1.34 billion impressions in the twelve months to 7 September 2026. Medians across advertiser accounts, never pooled totals. LinkedIn Audience Network delivery excluded.
| Measure | Median across advertiser accounts |
|---|---|
| Cost per landing page click | $14.83 |
| Cost per lead form open | $18.21 |
| Cost per completed lead form submission | $140.49 |
| Lead form completion rate | 11.6% |
| Median cost per demo request | $350 |
The finding that matters most when you are choosing between a large agency and a small one is this. Across 119 accounts where we could measure the entire path from impression to booked meeting, the spread between best and worst cost per booking was 121x. Traffic price, the thing media buying teams are built to optimise, explained 1.5x of it. Landing page and form conversion explained 72x. Scale buys you better media buying. It does not automatically buy you the 72x, and that is the question to put to every agency on this list, large or small.
Two supporting numbers from the same panel: 88% of lead form opens are abandoned, and only 35.7% of advertisers run all three funnel layers at all.
When Directive is still the right answer
If you are running paid media across search, social, programmatic and marketplaces at a combined budget in the high six figures a year or more, and you want one accountable partner rather than four specialists you have to coordinate yourself, Directive is built for exactly that and almost nobody on this list can match the staffing. The same is true if your category needs performance creative produced at volume, or if RevOps and media need to sit under one roof. Small specialist agencies, ours included, solve that by telling you to hire three suppliers. That is genuinely more work for your team, and for some companies the coordination cost is higher than the premium.
How to choose
Start with the shape of your spend. Concentrated in one or two channels points to a specialist. Spread across five points to a generalist with the staffing to cover them. Then ask who does the work. At any agency above roughly fifty people, ask directly which named individuals are on your account, what else they are on, and whether the people in the pitch are among them. It is a fair question and the answer is informative either way. Then ask for a number early. If an agency will not indicate a range before a second call, decide whether you are willing to spend three meetings finding out. Then test the measurement. Ask what the month three report contains. Pipeline by account, landing page clicks rather than LinkedIn’s default click field, and a self reported attribution question on the booking form is a good answer. A dashboard of impressions and CTR is not. Then check the tradeoff is stated. Any agency that cannot tell you who it is wrong for has not thought about it.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Directive cost?
Directive does not publish pricing or a stated minimum, so any number you read elsewhere is inference. Of the agencies on this page, Refine Labs and Kiin publish rates and KlientBoost returns indicative fees against each recommendation in its free plan, which makes those three the fastest way to calibrate what this category actually costs.
Is Directive a good agency?
On the public evidence, yes. It states 100+ strategists, 420+ brands and $1B+ in revenue generated, with a client list including Amazon, Adobe and Cisco. The reasons to look elsewhere on this page are about fit and structure, not quality, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise on a page we wrote as a competitor.
What is the best Directive alternative for a small budget?
If LinkedIn is the main channel, Kiin at $2,500 a month published or Impactable are the two here built for budgets that would make you a small account at Directive. If you need multi channel at a small budget, KlientBoost’s free plan will at least give you priced recommendations before you commit.
Directive or Refine Labs?
Directive is larger, covers more channels and does not publish prices. Refine Labs is narrower, focused on Series B+ SaaS demand generation, and publishes a full rate card starting at $14,000 a month. If price transparency matters to you, that is the deciding difference.
Do I need an agency this large?
Only if your channel count justifies it. The useful test is to list every channel you will actually spend on next year. One or two, and a specialist will give you more senior attention for less money. Five or more, and coordinating specialists becomes a job somebody on your team has to do.
What should I ask in the pitch?
Which named people are on the account and what else they are on, what the month three report contains, what the agency does about lead form abandonment specifically, and who the agency is wrong for. The last question is the most revealing.