Alternatives to Kalungi, Directive, and Refine Labs for B2B SaaS

Kalungi, Directive, and Refine Labs are three of the most respected agencies in B2B SaaS — and each is excellent at what it's built around: Kalungi at full-service marketing leadership, Directive at paid-media performance, and Refine Labs at demand creation. But all three are fundamentally marketing-led. If your real problem is that your data, paid media, and outbound don't connect — leads sales won't touch, outbound running on a separate track from marketing, no line from a dial to pipeline — then a better marketing agency isn't the answer. You want a RevOps-led alternative that runs the whole revenue system as one motion. That's the difference, and it's the gap Swivel is built to fill.

Here's an honest read on what each firm is great at, when one of them is the right call, and when you need a different kind of partner entirely.

What each firm is genuinely great at

Kalungi is a full-service B2B SaaS marketing agency built around a fractional (Associate) CMO plus an execution team, using its T2D3 growth framework. When you don't yet have a marketing function and need a whole department — positioning, messaging, content, SEO, paid, ABM — installed quickly and led by someone senior, Kalungi is a strong fit, especially for earlier-stage SaaS.

Directive is a performance-marketing agency for B2B tech, best known for its "Customer Generation" methodology — the argument that MQLs are a vanity metric and paid spend should be held accountable to pipeline and CAC. When paid media and search are your main growth levers and you're mid-market or enterprise with real budget to optimize, Directive's depth in performance is a genuine strength.

Refine Labs is a demand-generation agency that did as much as anyone to popularize demand creation over demand capture — the dark-social, brand-led thesis that most buyers aren't in-market yet, so you have to create demand rather than just harvest it. When your gap is shifting from lead-gen thinking to a modern demand model, and you're a funded mid-market or enterprise team, Refine Labs is a category leader.

None of that is faint praise. If your single biggest gap is one of those disciplines, one of these firms may well be your best choice — and this post will happily tell you so.

The thing all three have in common

Look at the center of gravity of each: marketing leadership, paid performance, demand creation. All three are marketing-led, and while each touches adjacent areas (Kalungi and Directive both offer RevOps via HubSpot, for instance), none is built around the connective tissue between marketing, outbound business development, and sales operations. In practice, the human-centric outbound and calling motion is usually a separate vendor entirely — bolted on beside the marketing engine rather than wired into it.

That's fine if marketing is your only gap. It's a problem if your symptoms look like this:

• Paid and content generate leads, but sales says they're unqualified and won't work them.

• Outbound runs on its own island, disconnected from what marketing is doing and saying.

• You can't draw a line from a dial or a campaign to a specific opportunity in the pipeline.

• Every tool reports its own numbers, and nothing reconciles to revenue.

Those aren't marketing-execution problems. They're system problems — and a marketing-led agency, however good, isn't structured to solve them.

When you need a RevOps-led alternative instead

A RevOps-led partner starts from the system, not the channel. Instead of optimizing one discipline, it connects all of them into a single operating motion — which is exactly what Swivel built its RevOS™ framework to do, across four connected layers:

• Foundation — a machine-checkable ICP, clean data, and TAM tiering, so every downstream action targets the right accounts.

• Demand Generation — content and paid built to create and capture demand, measured by cost per qualified lead (CPQL), not cost per lead.

• Human-Centric BD — signal-based, multichannel outbound and calling from trusted profiles — run as part of the system, not a separate vendor.

• Sales Enablement — playbooks, messaging, and reporting that turn meetings into pipeline.

The wiring between those layers is the point. A few things make the RevOps-led model concretely different from a marketing-led one:

• CPQL instead of CPL. Spend is judged on ICP-qualified leads, so paid and sales finally agree on what "qualified" means.

• ICP auto-qualification. Every inbound lead is scored against the ICP the moment it lands, then routed on the verdict — so sales stops getting leads it won't touch.

• Calling connected to pipeline. Outbound calling activity is logged to the account and joined to pipeline, so you can see dials next to deal value in one view.

• Closed-loop reporting. One source of truth from first touch to closed-won, across paid, outbound, and marketing.

The proof of the connected approach: Swivel has generated $150M+ in pipeline across clients, including Abre going from roughly $1M to $8M+ in pipeline in under a year, and Conger building $143M in pipeline across 19 opportunities in six months.

How to choose

• Choose Kalungi if you need a full marketing department stood up and led, especially earlier-stage.

• Choose Directive if paid media and performance are your main lever and you have budget to optimize at scale.

• Choose Refine Labs if your gap is shifting to a modern demand-creation model with enterprise budget behind it.

• Choose a RevOps-led partner like Swivel if your problem isn't one discipline but the fact that your data, paid, outbound, and sales don't operate as one connected system.

The bottom line

Kalungi, Directive, and Refine Labs are strong at what they're built for — and if marketing execution, paid performance, or demand creation is your single gap, one of them may be the right call. But if the real issue is that nothing connects — leads sales won't touch, outbound on its own island, no line from activity to revenue — the alternative you're looking for isn't another marketing agency. It's a RevOps-led partner that runs the whole system as one motion.

See what a connected revenue system would look like for you

A free Swivel growth audit maps your full funnel — data, demand gen, outbound, and reporting — and shows exactly where the disconnects are costing you pipeline, and what a single connected system would change. It's the fastest way to see the RevOps-led difference against your own numbers.

Get your free growth audit →

Frequently asked questions

What are the best alternatives to Kalungi, Directive, and Refine Labs?

It depends on your gap. Those three are marketing-led — strong at full-service marketing, paid performance, and demand creation respectively. If your problem is instead that data, paid, and outbound don't connect, a RevOps-led alternative like Swivel that runs the whole revenue system as one motion is the better fit.

How is a RevOps-led agency different from a marketing-led one?

A marketing-led agency optimizes a discipline — content, paid, or demand. A RevOps-led agency starts from the system, connecting ICP and data, demand gen, outbound and calling, and sales enablement into one motion with closed-loop reporting. The difference shows up when your problem is disconnection, not execution.

When should I pick Kalungi, Directive, or Refine Labs?

Pick Kalungi to stand up and lead a full marketing department, especially earlier-stage. Pick Directive when paid media is your main lever and you have budget to optimize at scale. Pick Refine Labs to shift to a modern demand-creation model with enterprise budget. Each is a category leader in its lane.

My leads are unqualified and my outbound is disconnected — which type of agency do I need?

Those are system problems, not marketing-execution problems, so a marketing-led agency usually isn't structured to fix them. You need a RevOps-led partner that defines the ICP, auto-qualifies inbound, connects outbound and calling to pipeline, and reports the whole thing closed-loop.

What makes Swivel different from these agencies?

Swivel is RevOps-led, running demand gen, human-centric business development and calling, and sales enablement as one connected system through its RevOS framework — measured on CPQL rather than CPL, with ICP auto-qualification and calling data tied to pipeline. The outbound motion is part of the system, not a separate vendor.