Business Communication Report: Aldi's Social Media Strategy Evaluation

This report, prepared for a Business Communication course (CMU201), examines Aldi's social media strategy. It begins with an overview of Aldi's company history and its expansion in the Australian retail sector. The report analyzes Aldi's existing social media practices, particularly its Facebook campaigns and community management, highlighting its focus on customer interaction and standardized content. It identifies potential communication problems, such as challenges in engaging employees and criticisms of marketing campaigns. The report recommends distinct goals and enhancements to Aldi's Facebook page to improve its social media communication. The conclusion emphasizes the importance of social media for retailers like Aldi to connect with customers, increase brand awareness, and drive sales, and highlights the need to adapt to the evolving social media landscape. The report provides references to academic research and industry sources to support its analysis and recommendations. The report is intended for business communication students to develop awareness of social media usage in Aldi.

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BUSINESS COMMUNICATION
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Table of Contents
Background......................................................................................................................................3
Company History.........................................................................................................................3
Social Media Communications strategy Aldi has implemented..................................................3
Existing practices.............................................................................................................................5
Potential communication problem...............................................................................................5
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Executive Summary
Several retailers are losing opportunities for not constituting strong social communication service
strategy. Social media is about communicating as well as interacting with consumers and
forming exceptional personalized brand experiences. Social channels develop by repeatedly
releasing pioneering features. Such a rapidly changeable environment can be intimidating for
some business owners. Social platforms have successfully removed serious obstructions and
difficulties between companies and their clientele. The following report has offered vital insights
to Business communication students in developing awareness of social media usage in Aldi.

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Background
Company History
Social media provides retailers with abundance of information regarding their consumers
and aids to establish a strong communication base with them. As social media is recognised as a
two-way interaction between the brand and the individual, contemporary retailers have been able
to get rapid understanding of products which are significantly preferred and further identify the
brand customers and efficiently relate to them (Verhoef, Kannan, and Inman 2015). The
Australian retail sector has been proliferating with increasing number of retailers along with an
intensifying competition amongst them. One of the renowned retailers Aldi has been operating
numerous retail chains across Australia. According to Hajli (2015), Aldi since opening its first
Australian store in 2001, have developed as one of the rapid expanding retailers in the country.
Aldi, comprising more than 500 stores nationwide along with a speedily increasing network
internationally, have stimulated the retail sector in Australia. Aldi currently comprises around
12,000 reliable employees throughout their stores, distribution centres as well as corporate
offices (Aldi.com.au 2019). The company with vision to aid Australian shoppers to live richer
lives for less has set up unique communication strategies on social media. The company claims
that all its clientele must receive the opportunity to buy everyday groceries of the premier quality
at the reasonable price and connect to them at ease. The following report is purposed for
Business communication students to develop awareness of social media usage in Aldi.
Social Media Communications strategy Aldi has implemented
In recent times the use of social media has increased as it facilitates retailers to establish
brand awareness and further expands the amount of time potential customers spend interacting

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browsing and understanding a brand by engaging them in conversations. Reports of Lehner and
Halliday (2014) have revealed that Aldi has recently attributed part of its significant
achievements to the innovation in its website. Aldi has developed its social media techniques for
providing payslips and management, blog posts to its employees which will eventually become a
highly democratic social network connecting not only with its managers but also with the senior
executive, checkout attendants as well as shelf stackers. However, Agnihotri et al. (2016) have
noted that the company has been encountering certain critical challenges to engage with
supermarket employees on social media platform due to their job functions which did not align
to the desk.
One of the areas in which Aldi draws utmost efficiency is in their community
management on Facebook. Reports of Mata and Quesada (2014) have revealed that each and
every comment, be it constructive or unconstructive is responded to directly and reverentially by
the company, even if they are not related to the actual post. Aldi in their social communication
strategy have essentially focused on providing utmost importance to its customers across the
world. In relation to the actual posts, Aldi’s Facebook campaigns are comparatively has a
standardized appearance and follow a highly reliable framework. It has been noted that majority
of the posts provided by the company on social media tend to feature a Special Buy product for
the week, and each post primarily includes a query for followers in order to answer in the
comments. According to Tsimonis and Dimitriadis (2014), such a communication strategy is
effective in upholding Aldi’s loyal following engaged clientele. However, it does not facilitate
the growth of the Facebook audience. Reports of Kumar et al. (2016), majority of the organic
follower base of Aldi is because of the company’s unique social media campaigns external to
Aldi’s control, such as Aldi Mum.

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Aldi Facebook Page
Source: (Aldi.com.au 2019)
Existing practices
Potential communication problem
On the other hand, the use of social media has been identified as one of the critical
challenges for Aldi in dealing with their wide range of customers. Reports of Verhoef, Kannan
and Inman (2015) have revealed that in 2018 Twitter marketing campaign has been on successful
when Aldi’s hashtag has been captured by critics. Furthermore, the Facebook page which has
been followed by millions of Australians have become critical for the company's public relation
unit after a post by an educated farmer's wife went viral with over 70000 likes and 4000
comments. For these reasons, the company has been currently using the customer relationship
management software of Salesforce.com along with the radiance tool in order to regulate as well
as monitor its social media activities for customers’ feedback and grievances (Aldi.com.au
2019). Despite of these issues related to the use of social media by Aldi there are mountain
evidences of the constructive side of using social media by retailers. it is undesirable to note that

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social media has provided significant value and prospect for Aldi to establish a strong
communication base with its customers for sharing ideas perspectives regarding their products
and also actor responsive to negative commentary for events regarding the quality of their
products or services.
Recommendations
Regardless these fundamental social media practices of Aldi, the company requires to
establish distinctively defined goals in order to be successful. Aldi in order to expand its social
media communication base must enhance its Facebook page from standardized to vibrant and
strategically categorized segments of conversions as both its primary conversations tend to direct
visitors to the consumer service form. According to Lehner and Halliday (2014), Aldi in order to
effectively establish social media strategy must aid its consumers to fill out the form by entering
a barcode and the date when they purchased the product along with their name, address, phone
number and other identity evidences.
Conclusion
Hence to conclude, it is essential for retailers like Aldi to use social media in order to
connect to customers and further increase their brands awareness and stimulate leads and sales.
Social channels progress by continually releasing innovative features and such a rapidly varying
environment can be intimidating for some business owners. The report has noted that social
platforms have effectively removed critical impediments and barriers between companies and
their clientele. In recent times, customers instead of connecting to customer service line show
greater tendency to turn to Facebook or Twitter in order to solve problems or seek information.

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References
Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M.Y. and Krush, M.T., 2016. Social media: Influencing customer
satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, pp.172-180.
Aldi.com.au., 2019. ALDI Supermarkets - Good Different - ALDI Australia. [online]
Aldi.com.au. Available at: https://www.aldi.com.au/ [Accessed 18 May 2019].
Hajli, N., 2015. Social commerce constructs and consumer's intention to buy. International
Journal of Information Management, 35(2), pp.183-191.
Kumar, A., Bezawada, R., Rishika, R., Janakiraman, R. and Kannan, P.K., 2016. From social to
sale: The effects of firm-generated content in social media on customer behavior. Journal of
Marketing, 80(1), pp.7-25.
Lehner, M. and Halliday, S., 2014. Branding sustainability: Opportunity and risk behind a brand-
based approach to sustainable markets. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization.
Mata, F.J. and Quesada, A., 2014. Web 2.0, social networks and e-commerce as marketing
tools. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 9(1), pp.56-69.
Tsimonis, G. and Dimitriadis, S., 2014. Brand strategies in social media. Marketing Intelligence
& Planning, 32(3), pp.328-344.
Verhoef, P.C., Kannan, P.K. and Inman, J.J., 2015. From multi-channel retailing to omni-channel
retailing: introduction to the special issue on multi-channel retailing. Journal of retailing, 91(2),
pp.174-181.