How can a technical person (e.g., an engineer or researcher) develop marketing skills?

Martin's post includes an outstanding reading list. Here are a few more: http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Innovation-Successful-Businesses-ebook/dp/B004J4XGN6 by Eric Ries (book). A good way to think about marketing and product development as a single continuous loop. http://www.appsumo.com. Wonderful videos and ideas for selling products quickly using bare bones marketing resources. http://www.HubSpot.com. Tons of free white papers, webinars, and blog posts for ideas on inbound marketing. Also look for the YouTube videos for their Inbound Marketing 2012 and 2013 conferences. Lots of excellent speakers on the docket. http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/09/startup-metrics.html - Blog post by Dave McClure. http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/sales-marketing-machine/intro/ http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/on-selling/ - Mark Suster I also like Robert's suggestion below: If you want to learn marketing, start selling stuff via a webshop. Read http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/ for more on this. The AppSumo blog will also give you good ideas. And even before you sell a product, set up a few landing pages for apps or products you think are good ideas and post them. Run a few long tail Google Ad Word campaigns or use specific #hashtags on Twitter to promote. http://www.landerapp.com is pretty good and has a free version that allows 500 page views. That's plenty to have some fun testing out ideas.

Read the bible of Marketing Management by Philip Kotler. This was the first book on marketing that I read and I still like to read it. It is simple, easy to understand and covers almost every aspect of marketing management

Thanks for the A2A. To start, I would suggest looking into Tim Ferriss' Four-Hour Workweek. All his fame and fortune is fundamentally based on his exceptionally marketing skills with an understanding of human psychology under the umbrella of his marketing skills, in my opinion. From there, you will already be introduces to a multitude of marketing tools, so you can pivot and develop in whatever path appeals to you, and should have plenty of resources to take your next step. Hope this helps! :)

Market research often includes case studies. Select a product, brand or segment and track how it was decided upon, positioned and maintained. This could be done in a paper or blog if the results were to be used for reference. The idea is to figure out what was tried and what was successful. Timing and competition are also significant. A lot of it is shifting now including investments, distribution, ads and payments, for instance, so there is plenty of room for creativity. Developing markets often prize innovation and may put their own spin on something to differentiate it from how it is done anyplace else. Examples might be how Battelle looks at search, Shirky on the internet, Scoble re mobile, Wolfram about computation, or Haque in regard to economics.

http://Coursera.org offers free online classes in many subjects. I believe the Wharton School of Business offers a basic marketing class. Thanks for the question!

Thanks for A2A. I will cover all the necessary aspects so the answer would be as informative as possible. Who is a Marketer and what is Marketing?  Marketing is broad and time specific, facing new battles everyday. Marketing is a dragon; once one of its heads becomes obsolete, two new versions come out, whether replacing or enhancing the old head. It's been around two years since I graduated. What I remember, is that throughout all marketing related courses, you keep on repeating Marketing meaning as it is defined by American Marketing Association (AMA): "Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." This phrase summarizes a lot of work, a work that is possibly cannot be done only by one person. Always keep in mind, that true marketing is consumer driven (the marketing concept) to deliver some value to customers. Let's consider this: You don't come up with iPads just because you solely decided so on Tuesday morning over a cup of coffee. You don't sell iPads in small supermarkets. You don't advertise iPads on flyers and brochures, that are distributed to houses and car lots. You are a Marketer, and you know how to stick to the true Marketing. You come up with iPad idea, based on research that shows that there is a gap between mobile phones market and laptop market. You discover, based on thorough and reliable analysis that people want to browse internet, watch movies, play games, and do many other things that they do on laptops and PCs, but they want to do that on the go. Here, you are a Marketing researcher that created a value (try Marketing Research book publish by McGraw Hill). After the product has been created, you need people to know about the brilliant idea. In marketing, there are lots of charts and diagrams that help you segment the marketing. But let's keep things simple. There are already Apple fans that are ready to try any new Apple product (regardless of costs). There are also innovators, who are typically young and are financially strong, willing to try something new. As an experience Marketer from Apple, you already know how to reach these segments (perhaps via news letter, blogs, and of course major presentations). After targeting these two niches, you would probably go for first majority via mass advertising, like tech magazines, social networks, billboards, etc. You should know who, where, and when, of your target market, interacts with what. Here comes the expertise of a Marketer who is seasoned in Advertising and Communications. Of you course have probably noticed the tremendous impact of social networks on business activities. Most of people are online, talking about stuff and sharing some other stuff; a stuff that can be important for creating new value. So the companies are hiring Social Media and Digital specialists to filter and funnel the info, attract new customers, and retain the existing ones. Final major Marketing category is sales.There are plenty of books for being a great sales-rep, but let's get this straight. I read the sales strategies from McGraw hill book, and I usually recognize these strategies while negotiating with companies. I'm not a salesperson, never was, and never loved that, but everybody should know how to negotiate. Sales comes with experience, It's worth to mention that life is unfair, and most of times Charisma overrides even the best sales tactic. Now you have the base to decide which sandwich do you prefer. During my university years I emphasized on Marketing research, because in my opinion it's the mother of all marketing; however this is another topic. So you could study these fields and proudly wear the Marketer Title: - Marketing Research (implying branding, problem solving, opportunity exploitation, and other loud stuff). - Advertising & Communications. - Social Media and Digital Marketing - Sales Always remember that marketing is a science, but leave some space for impulsiveness; it happens that you can over-think. On more personal note, I started as a researcher, then diversified into communications, and then took some master-class in social media, not mentioning the advantages of psychology courses. I advise constant diversification, because when you become a top manager, you will be aware what is going around, and what's feasible versus what's crazy.

It is indeed a very good question. As the marketing & sales guy from a software development company - http://tryolabs.com - I've seen quite a lot of dev focused projects that didn't succeed because of their lack of market fit. Although the entrepreneurial journey can be quite complex and nothing is guaranteed, to try to market your product/service at the time you develop is a good path to be closer to success in the competitive landscape. As a matter of gathering together some marketing tools for technical entrepreneurs I wrote this post: http://blog.tryolabs.com/2016/01/28/market-while-developing-101-ideas-tools-for-the-early-days/. Hope you find these resources useful in order to start executing a marketing strategy not investing much time and resources. The best way to learn in Marketing - as in any other field - is by experience. Test, measure & improve. 

Nowadays, classic marketing (interrupting people with your commercial message) doesn't work anymore. You show your (technical) knowledge and your personality online, and the customers that you deserve will find you. So actually marketing is quite simple for you as an expert. See the infographic below:

As engineers we can get caught up in the specifics and focused on details that may not matter to the end user. We all have to realise that to innovate it is just as import to understand and listen to your customers as it is to solve their problems. There are two types of research to complete rhttp://ecofounder.net/business/research-customers/. Secondary research is observing trends and data that has been collected by someone else. Primary research is conducted internally by interacting with potential customers directly. For a complete guide, list of tools and even a free worksheet head over to Rhttp://ecofounder.net/business/research-customers/. - George