Promotional Strategies for Standalone Apps: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda

Abstract

Employing Lemon & Verhoef’s customer journey framework to capture sequential user interactions with digital products, we develop a strategic framework for promoting standalone apps (those without existing brand backing) spanning pre-adoption, adoption and post-adoption stages. Four critical insights emerge: (1) Standalone apps require culturally adaptive trust mechanisms employing social proof and transparency strategies to compensate for brand anonymity, (2) Resource-constraint adaptation fundamentally shapes promotional strategy selection, with successful apps developing resource-efficient approaches across multiple touchpoints, (3) Technical-commercial balance through hybrid monetisation models shows higher retention than single-revenue approaches and (4) Cross-stage promotional integration reveals that strategies must dynamically interconnect across customer journey stages, with post-adoption success relying on above-average engagement and ethical data use. Our review reveals gaps in long-term strategy effectiveness, cultural adaptation mechanisms and cross-stage optimisation, leading to a research agenda investigating dynamic trust-building frameworks, resource-efficient promotion strategies and temporal promotional optimisation. This study advances digital marketing theory by extending the customer journey framework to standalone digital products and developing a model explaining how brand absence and resource constraints jointly shape promotional effectiveness. These contributions offer practical implications for resource-constrained app developers in competitive marketplaces.