How Mehana Nazar Learned to Market What She Didn’t Yet Understand

Marketers are often told their skills are transferable. The channels may look familiar but the audience, the buying process, and the definition of success can change completely. Selling a dress and marketing reinforcement steel are both marketing problems – but they are not the same problem.

Mehana Nazar learned this firsthand. After building her early career in fashion and B2C marketing, she made a deliberate move into industrial B2B. At the time of the interview, she had spent about a year as Integrated Marketing Specialist at Al Gurg Building Services (AGBS), a UAE-based manufacturer of reinforcement steel products – steel bars, welded wire mesh, and coils - and part of the larger Al Gurg Group. Her role now combines traditional outreach, digital campaigns, and AI-assisted research.

What follows are the lessons she gathered along the way – not by copying what worked before but by learning an industry from the ground up.

Familiar Marketing Skills Do Not Guarantee a Familiar Market

Moving from fashion to steel was never going to be a simple product swap. Mehana describes the difference through one essential lens: purchasing risk.

A consumer fashion purchase might involve a few hundred dirhams and a quick decision. A construction project can run into millions. Industrial buyers need evidence, reliability, compliance with standards, and long-term confidence. The marketing has to support a slower, more considered process - one built on trust rather than impulse.

Mehana didn't expect her old tactics to work. She actively chose an unfamiliar industry because she wanted to test the limits of what she knew.

That realization shaped her approach. Instead of adapting fashion campaigns for steel, she started learning how the construction industry actually operates. That meant reading industry news, following specialized pages on steel and construction, tracking market rates, asking technical colleagues questions, and speaking directly with people in the market.

Technical Marketing Begins with Asking Basic Questions

Mehana entered AGBS with no background in steel or civil engineering. The learning curve was steep - she had to get comfortable asking about measurements, manufacturing processes, ISO and ASTM standards, certification requirements, and construction terminology. But her colleagues made it manageable. They shared industry news unprompted, managers supported her learning curve, and technical team members answered questions patiently. She found that direct, one-to-one conversations helped bridge the gap: when people saw she was genuinely trying to learn, they were willing to explain.

This isn't a weakness. It's part of the job: translating deep technical expertise into communication that the market can act on.

Traditional, Digital, and AI Marketing Should Work Together

One of Mehana's strongest convictions is that industrial B2B marketing doesn't require choosing between traditional and digital methods. The most effective approach integrates all three generations: traditional relationship-building, digital reach, and AI-assisted efficiency.

She doesn't see traditional marketing as outdated. In steel and construction, personal meetings, direct sales conversations, invitations, product demonstrations, and long-term relationship management remain essential. Digital channels - Google Ads, LinkedIn, email, SMS, website content, PR, and campaign landing pages - extend and measure those efforts. AI then supports the research and preparation behind both.

Her work around AGBS's ECAS certification illustrates the model in practice. Before communicating the achievement externally, Mehana had to understand what the certification meant, why the standards mattered, and how the news should land with different audiences. She used a custom AI setup to study the subject, then combined direct client communication, digital campaigns, content work, AI-assisted research, and ongoing relationship management into one coordinated push.

As campaigns grow across traditional and digital channels, a shared, searchable asset library can help teams find the right approved image, document, or campaign file without rebuilding the work.

AI Can Accelerate Research, but It Should Not Make the Decision

Mehana uses ChatGPT extensively - especially when she needs to understand an unfamiliar technical topic quickly. She turns to AI to gather introductory information, summarize articles and research, surface relevant evidence, explain concepts in clear points, and help structure an idea more professionally. It saves hours during the initial research stage.

But she draws a firm line. Strategic decisions, original campaign concepts, logical judgment, final content, and responsibility for accuracy all stay with her. Strategic thinking and logical judgment remain firmly in human hands.

Her workflow typically starts with an idea developed around a monthly campaign theme. AI then helps refine or research that idea – never generate it from scratch.

For technical subjects involving safety, certification, or regulatory standards, human verification remains non-negotiable. AI can summarize, but it cannot guarantee accuracy.

Do Not Confuse Engagement with Relevance

Mehana takes a deliberately practical view of marketing metrics, especially on LinkedIn. She cares less about likes, comments, or follower counts than about one question: who is actually visiting?

If most new visitors are contractors, and contractors are a priority audience, the content is doing its job – even if those visitors never follow the page or leave a public trace. Relevance, in her view, is measured by audience quality, not by visible engagement.

Her earlier experience with influencer marketing sharpened this skepticism. Follower counts and comment volumes can be inflated. What matters more is engagement rate, audience composition, consistency between the influencer's past and current recommendations, and whether the creator has genuine credibility with the intended audience. A large following means little if the audience doesn't overlap with the people who might actually buy.

Good Team Culture Makes Learning Possible

When Mehana describes how she learned an unfamiliar industry, she keeps returning to two things: communication and patience.

She prefers direct conversation over text messages. Text hides tone, hesitation, and genuine understanding. Face-to-face or on a video call, it's easier to see whether someone agrees, is confused, or needs more context.

Her colleagues at AGBS gave her room to learn without making her feel that her questions were a burden. Patience, she believes, is the foundation of any supportive team. That environment also helped her grow more confident. Earlier in her career, she often worried she had done something wrong and apologized repeatedly. Supportive managers helped her separate real mistakes from unnecessary self-blame.

Mistakes Become Useful When You Slow Down Enough to Understand Them

Earlier in her career, Mehana sometimes acted on partial information - reacting before she had fully heard or understood the request. She recalls one instance involving an advertising campaign where she moved too quickly, working with only half the picture.

The lesson wasn't about avoiding mistakes altogether. It was about learning to listen to the complete instruction, pause before acting, clarify numbers and expectations, and understand why something went wrong – without treating every error as proof that she wasn't capable.

A former manager and mentor, Jessica, played an important role here. She helped Mehana build the confidence to slow down, examine a mistake, and grow from it rather than spiral. The goal isn't to avoid mistakes entirely but to understand their root cause so they don't recur.

Learn What Makes You Want to Keep Learning

Mehana studied accounting and finance before marketing - not because she loved the subjects, but because they seemed like a safe path. That changed when she discovered marketing. The difference wasn't the difficulty of the material; it was her own willingness to engage with it.

Studying something she didn't enjoy taught her to recognize the gap between learning from obligation and learning from genuine interest. Marketing closed that gap.

Her advice to someone starting out is twofold: listen carefully to people with experience, and don't lock yourself into a path that leaves no room for curiosity. The right career won't eliminate difficult learning - it will give you a reason to keep showing up for it.

Final Thought

Mehana's experience is a reminder that entering a new industry doesn't require pretending to understand everything on day one. It requires asking better questions, listening to the people who already understand it, and resisting the urge to apply familiar tactics before understanding the market. Tools can accelerate the work, but curiosity is what makes the work relevant.