Should Industrial Companies Lead With Google Ads? Patricia Gunter Weighs In for TechRound
TechRound asked a group of marketers whether agencies that lead with Google Ads are burning their clients’ money. Duplia Marketing founder Patricia Gunter made the case for building organic presence first, and shared what happened when Duplia did exactly that.
ATLANTA (Sept. 2, 2026) – TechRound, a UK business and technology publication, this week published a debate on a question that comes up in nearly every conversation Duplia has with industrial leadership teams: should Google Ads be the first thing a company invests in, or the last? Patricia Gunter, founder and fractional CMO at Duplia Marketing, was among the marketers asked to weigh in.
The answers split. One side argued that Google Ads are an amplifier rather than a foundation, and that running them before search, content, and earned media have built some trust means paying premium prices to convince strangers you are credible. The other side argued that ads only waste money when the offer, the tracking, and the landing page are weak, and that for a new business paid search can be the fastest way to test demand and learn which messages work.
Gunter’s contribution focused on what paid search cannot do for a business, and on the shift in how industrial buyers now find suppliers.
“Google Ads give you visibility while you continue to pay; once you stop, you become a ghost online,” Gunter said. “These ads don’t influence how AI engines recognize your business. When buyers consult ChatGPT or Copilot for recommendations, their responses rely on your organic presence. Your potential clients are already using AI tools to search online. Forrester found that 94% of B2B buyers now use generative AI or conversational search.”
She pointed to Duplia’s own launch as the example.
“When I launched Duplia Marketing, I decided to invest in its organic online presence rather than in Google Ads or paid search,” Gunter said. “Within only 2 months, the website appeared in over 17,000 searches on both Google and Bing for more than 600 terms. One blog post was cited 283 times by Copilot in a single month, and leads were generated through AI search.”
Her recommendation to the leadership teams reading the debate was direct. “Focus on building your organic presence first and use paid ads only for keywords where organic search has not yet established visibility.”
Industrial buyers research quietly and for a long time before they contact a supplier. As more of that research moves into AI tools, the sources those tools draw on are organic: a company’s website, its published content, and third party mentions of it. Paid search does not feed that layer, which is why Duplia treats organic presence as the foundation of industrial B2B marketing and paid search as the amplifier that comes after it.
Read the full debate on TechRound: Quite Contrary: Agencies That Lead With Google Ads Are Burning Money.
About Duplia Marketing
Duplia Marketing is a fractional CMO practice built exclusively for small and mid-size industrial B2B and manufacturing organizations across the Americas. The firm works side by side with leadership teams as an embedded marketing executive, owning strategy and directing execution. Founder Patricia Gunter spent 25 years inside industrial organizations, including VP Marketing, Americas at AMMEGA and strategic marketing, business development, and M&A integration roles at Emerson, before building the practice around the segment she knows best.
Media Contact
Patricia Gunter, Founder and Fractional CMO, Duplia Marketing
Email: contact@dupliamarketing.com
Patricia Gunter is the founder of Duplia Marketing and a fractional CMO with 25 years of marketing leadership inside industrial B2B companies and manufacturers. Connect with Patricia on LinkedIn.