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Wait marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company delivers a promotional message to a consumer while he or she is forced to wait for something else. These messages can include posters in buses and subways or video clips at fuel pumps.
This phrase was coined by Diana Derval. Although wait marketing has been used by businesses worldwide for years, Derval's works identified it as a key marketing tactic that is now consciously implemented on a regular basis.
The forms that wait marketing may take are varied and typically involve various other marketing strategies such as visual advertising and video. In some cases the target customer may be 'compulsory' to view the marketing material, and in others the company simply makes use of the increased perceptiveness and unoccupied time that is available when the potential customer is waiting.
An example of 'compulsory' wait marketing would be posters on the back of restaurant toilet doors, where the individual is facing the advert so directly they are almost compulsed to look at it. In other cases, marketing agents place ads in areas surrounding the waiting customer's attention, such as ads for food products surrounding the petrol pump, which the person may look at whilst waiting for their tank to fill up.