Overview
Directive Consulting is the leading B2B marketing agency for companies that are done optimizing for metrics that don't move the business. With over a decade of expertise and 420+ B2B brands behind us, we operate through 3 divisions: Performance, Communications, and Commerce, each built to share intelligence and align on revenue. Our methodology, DiscoverabilityOS, aligns brand and demand to guide your ICP to choose you across every decision point.
The Role
We're looking for an Associate Director, Integrated Strategic Planning dedicated to Performance Marketing to connect business goals, audience insights, brand positioning, and channel strategy into a clear plan for growth. This is not a channel-by-channel planning role. You'll wear two different hats: uncovering the insight that gives a brand a meaningful advantage and leading the translation of that insight into an integrated performance marketing plan that teams can execute and measure.
You'll lead strategic planning for Performance Marketing engagements, aligning paid media, performance creative, landing page experiences, analytics, and client business outcomes around a shared understanding of the customer and the business opportunity.
Responsibilities
Audience Research and Insight Development
- Lead research into client businesses, ideal customer profiles, buying committees, competitors, and category dynamics.
- Synthesize customer interviews, market research, search behavior, and campaign data into insights that shape strategy.
- Map the B2B buying journey, identifying decision points, barriers, and opportunities to influence consideration and conversion.
- Turn research into a clear strategic point of view, not just a collection of observations.
Integrated Strategy and Planning
- Lead integrated strategic planning within Performance Marketing, connecting audience insight, messaging, paid media, performance creative, and conversion experiences to client growth objectives.
- Define the audience, positioning, messaging priorities, channel roles, and sequencing needed to meet client business goals.
- Partner with paid media, design, copy, landing page, and analytics specialists to define coordinated performance marketing plans across paid search, paid social, display, and video.
- Apply DiscoverabilityOS principles within Performance Marketing, aligning audience targeting, messaging, and conversion experiences with the decision points that matter to the client's ideal customers.
Creative Briefing and Collaboration
- Write focused strategic and creative briefs that clarify the business challenge, audience insight, value proposition, and desired response.
- Partner with performance design, copy, paid media, and landing page teams to turn strategy into compelling creative and connected conversion experiences.
- Facilitate planning workshops and working sessions that align stakeholders around one direction.
- Evaluate concepts and plans against the brief, keeping work grounded in audience needs and business outcomes.
Strategy and Client Partnership
- Own the strategic planning direction for assigned Performance Marketing engagements, partnering with client success and channel leads to clarify objectives, challenge assumptions, and prioritize opportunities.
- Present research, strategic recommendations, and integrated plans in language clients and senior stakeholders can act on.
- Lead the strategic narrative for Performance Marketing pitches and account expansion opportunities, grounding recommendations in audience insight and evidence.
- Build alignment across Performance Marketing teams and clients, documenting decisions and explaining the trade-offs behind the plan.
Measurement and Business Impact
- Translate business objectives into a measurement framework with shared goals, channel-specific indicators, and clear learning priorities.
- Partner with analytics and paid media teams to interpret performance across engagement, conversion, lead quality, pipeline, and revenue where data is available.
- Develop test-and-learn plans that validate audience, messaging, creative, and channel assumptions.
- Recommend adjustments based on evidence, acknowledging attribution limits and balancing short-term performance with long-term brand growth.
- Consider budget, scope, and delivery constraints so recommendations are commercially sound and executable.
AI and Technology Integration
- Use AI and research tools to support insight synthesis, competitive analysis, and planning efficiency.
- Validate AI-generated outputs against reliable sources and protect confidential client information.
- Establish repeatable research, briefing, and planning standards for Performance Marketing, coaching colleagues in their use and improving strategic quality.
Qualifications
- Substantial experience in strategic planning, integrated performance marketing, or account planning within an agency or growth-focused business, with demonstrated ownership of complex client strategies.
- A portfolio demonstrating strategic leadership: how audience insights shaped performance marketing briefs, coordinated channel plans, and measurable business outcomes.
- Experience with B2B performance marketing, complex buying journeys, paid media, performance creative, and conversion strategy.
- Ability to independently lead planning engagements, advise senior client stakeholders, and mentor colleagues while remaining hands-on with research and briefing.
- Strong understanding of how brand, demand generation, and customer experience contribute to business growth.
- Ability to connect marketing recommendations to commercial priorities, budgets, and realistic execution plans.
- Confidence interpreting quantitative and qualitative evidence, distinguishing meaningful signals from vanity metrics.
- Hands-on familiarity with research, audience intelligence, analytics, and planning tools.
- Ability to use AI responsibly for research and synthesis while applying independent judgment and source validation.
- Strong storyteller who can turn complex information into a clear insight, strategic narrative, and actionable brief.
- Skilled facilitator who builds alignment across clients, creative practitioners, paid media specialists, analytics teams, and senior leadership.
- Strong organization and prioritization skills, with the ability to manage multiple planning workstreams in a fast-paced environment.
What Success Looks Like
- In the first 90 days, you've built strong relationships within Performance Marketing and with key client stakeholders, developed a working understanding of assigned client businesses and audiences, and taken ownership of strategic planning priorities. You've delivered clear insights and briefs and identified opportunities to improve research, channel alignment, and conversion journeys.
- Within six months, you're confidently owning strategic planning for assigned Performance Marketing engagements, leading evidence-based recommendations, aligning paid media and creative around shared objectives, and using results to refine plans. You're strengthening planning standards, mentoring colleagues, and articulating the value of Performance Marketing strategy in client and new business conversations.
Compensation and Benefits
- Annual base salary range: $150,000 to $180,000 USD with potential for bonus eligibility
- 100% employer-paid medical, dental, and vision for employee; 50% employer contribution for dependents
- Mental health support through Spring Health and Headspace
- Physical health benefits including Omada, Aaptiv virtual workouts, and One Medical membership
- Unlimited PTO with a 2-week minimum, paid company holidays, birthday off, and end of year recharge (December 24 through January 1)
- Paid parental leave
- Traditional and Roth 401(k) with 3% company match
- Annual tenure-based bonus that scales over time
- Annual company-wide retreat
- 100% remote work from home office