Why even prehistoric firms should embrace social media

From a 'perfectly nice hotel' to natural history museum

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Running a business

• Savvy shops sell by stealth
• Brazil's successful family firms
• Married to the job
• Fresh approach to speedy delivery

The owners of a hotel in Denver, Colorado, are spending big on a dinosaur-themed renovation, and the social media exposure they hope will make their property a hit.

A few miles away from Greg and Meredith Tally's Best Western Denver Southwest hotel lies Dinosaur Ridge, an outcrop of rocks that contains the remains of the giant dinosaurs that once called this corner of the US home.

The Tallys thinks Dinosaur Ridge is an important part of American history - and a potential tourist hotspot in the making.

To that end, their hotel is currently undergoing a $3.25m (£2.2m) renovation to become half hotel, half natural history museum.

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Tell a story, continue to tell the story, don't take the [social media] followers that you have for granted”

Jeremy GoldmanSocial media expert

To promote the new venture, Mr Tally is doing what many small business owners do to drum up business - turning to social media.

Social media is often billed as a low-cost method of business marketing. After all, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr are free to use and do not require sophisticated online savvy.

But Mr Tally took a different approach, spending $35,000 on a personalised cartoon, drawn and hosted by Seattle-based cartoonist Matt Inman, whose The Oatmeal website garners seven million unique viewers a month.

'Building ambassadors'

Mr Inman was hosting a contest to raise money for his pet project, a museum devoted to electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla, and offered the prize to anyone who donated $33,000 or more.

The cartoon highlighting the Tally's hotel features on The Oatmeal website

In spending such a large sum - enough to hire a social media consultant for a year - Mr Tally was taking a bet that courting The Oatmeal would introduce his project to people around the globe with the same intense interest in science that he sought in potential customers.

"One of the reasons we invested in social media so heavily is it's a chance to really bond with the public," says Mr Tally. "If you look at it as sheer numbers or a number game you're missing out.

"It's really about building an affinity or building an affection in people who will go out and be your ambassadors."

Matt Inman's cartoon detailed the Denver area's palaeontological history and the story of the Bone Wars - an intense competition between amateur palaeontologists in the 1800s.

Readers were asked to follow Mr Tally on Twitter and Facebook, where he and his wife Meredith populate each platform with unique dinosaur-related content every day.

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Having a personality online helps you build trust and camaraderie with dream clients”

Kathleen ShannonBraid Creative

Mr Tally says: "The moment the cartoon hit it was like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We opened the Wonka chocolate bar and there was the golden ticket - the numbers began to pour in and continues to pour in."

The investment yielded more than 70,000 Facebook fans and 8,000 Twitter followers globally.

Social media expert Jeremy Goldman, author of a book called Going Social, says that targeting social media followers makes sense depending on the business.

"Ten thousand of the right clients can be more useful than a million random clients," he says, as long as each client or follower provides a bigger rate of return.

A stay in a hotel room, for instance, will have bigger margins than if you are selling a $1 cola. The soft drinks company would need millions of followers; the hotel can afford to keep its base small and select.

Distinct voice

In an effort to further build their online following, the Tallys put their mouth where their money is.

Workers carry the head of a tylosaur relief into the hotel. Mr Tally has dubbed the dinosaur Sophie.

After the cartoon ran, they hosted a 12-hour long "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) on Reddit, the social sharing website.

In AMAs, users ask questions directly to the hosts, whether it is President Barack Obama ("What are you going to do to end the corrupting influence of money in politics?") or a McDonalds manager ("What's the weirdest thing you've found in your food?").

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Rules of engagement

Kathleen Shannon, of Braid Creative, shares four tips for social media success:

• Be consistent Make a schedule and stick to it, whether it is once a week or once an hour. "Setting expectations for your readers will help you attract more followers," she says.
• Don't force it "Don't jump on board with social media that you don't jive with. If you hate writing, a blog might not be the best bet for you."
• Be selective She recommends picking one or two platforms that you like and understand, at least to start.
• Use creatively Platforms should be utilised differently. Repeating the same content on Twitter and Facebook will irritate followers, and what works on one is not always suited for the other.

The AMA was an ideal place to court science-minded clients, and show off the Tally's quirky online presence.

Mr Tally's opening included this line: "We do want to squash the pernicious rumours that we are using the hotel to fund a secret underground dinosaur cloning lab."

That distinct voice makes businesses more attractive to customers, says Kathleen Shannon, co-founder of the marketing and branding firm Braid Creative.

"Having a personality online helps you build trust and camaraderie with dream clients - you're not just a gun for hire."

She compares it to old-fashioned networking through church or school groups, only now on a global scale. "People want to do business with companies they feel like they know and like," she says.

Turning clicks into customers

The hotel is still open during renovations, but it won't resemble the promised palaeo-paradise until at least June. The challenge now is to keep online followers interested.

"You don't want to hit people over the head with the coolness of what you're doing too soon," says Mr Goldman.

An artist's rendering of the dinosaur coat of arms that will hang in the hotel lobby.

People like stories on social media, he says.

"Tell a story, continue to tell the story, don't take the followers that you have for granted," he says.

Greg and Meredith Tally hope that is the approach they are taking. They pepper all their social media platforms with dinosaur cartoons, jokes and facts, as well as updates about the hotel.

So far, bookings are slightly up. But on a sunny day, some of the hotel's online fans became real-life admirers.

David Martinez, who lives near the hotel, pulled his boys out of school to watch Tally and his staff unpack the 40-foot tylosaur skeleton that will hang over the hotel's restaurant.

The Martinezes found out about the hotel through Facebook, he says, and they have been following the progress online ever since.

"We would like to have the birthday party for one, if not both, of the boys here, so we're anxiously awaiting the opening," says Mr Martinez.

Then father joined his sons. All three of them were eager to see a dinosaur up close.

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Spice king: How a New Orleans food firm went global

Chef Paul Prudhomme exports his blends to 37 countries

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Running a business

• Designs on social media success
• Savvy shops sell by stealth
• Brazil's successful family firms
• Married to the job

Paul Prudhomme is one of America's most famous chefs - he has cooked for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, and has won almost every fine-dining culinary award that the United States has to offer.

But here in an industrial suburb of New Orleans, far away from the white tablecloths, he is munching happily on lavender pods from a giant rubber dustbin.

As more than 50,000 pounds of spices, flour, and salt are blended together overhead in his Magic Seasonings plant, Chef Paul offers workers herbs from a bin lid as if he's passing around hors d'oeuvres at his famous restaurant, K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, in the city's French Quarter.

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99% of American companies are ignoring 95% of the world's consumers”

Jerry HingleSouthern United States Trade Association

Chef Paul's love of spice - of oregano from Turkey, sassafras from Appalachia, and spicy peppers from right here in Louisiana - is what first made diners fall in love with the Cajun cooking at his restaurant in the 1980s.

"Customers would come in and eat and would say what are you putting in the food?" says Mr Prudhomme. "So we would give them [the seasonings] because it was cheap.

"Over the years, it just got all over the globe."

A line of customers stretches along the street at Chef Paul Prudhomme's New Orleans restaurant

Today, Magic Seasonings is a multimillion-dollar business, with 27 different spice blends that are manufactured in a 100,000 sq ft factory - replete with a top-secret recipe experimentation room and a test kitchen, which on the day the BBC visited was occupied by representatives from the country's biggest pork producer.

Now, instead of bringing spices from around the world to his customers at K-Paul, Chef Paul exports his blends to 37 countries.

Revenues from exports make up more than 25% of the business and are growing rapidly.

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"Distance is not an issue. If people want to buy our chocolate bars in Abu Dhabi, I'm going to sell them in Abu Dhabi”

Joel DondisFounder, Sucre

Crossing the Border

Only one in 100 small businesses in the US is an exporter - and of that select group, most export to only one other country, typically either neighbouring Mexico and Canada, according to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

This means there is plenty of room to grow, according to Jerry Hingle, executive director of the Southern United States Trade Association (Susta).

"Ninety-five per cent of the world's consumers are outside of the United States," says Mr Hingle. "So in effect, 99% of American companies are ignoring 95% of the world's consumers."

Helping small businesses reach those consumers is crucial to President Obama's economic initiative.

He has made increasing exports a priority, explicitly stating as part of his National Export Initiative that he hopes to double American exports by 2015.

Companies like Magic Seasonings are a large part of that plan, as 97% of US exporters are small and medium-sized businesses.

Jerry Hingle believes that more small businesses should export

Already, agricultural exports, which include things like soybeans but also speciality food products like Chef Paul's blends, are up 50% since 2009.

But more needs to be done to help educate businesses about how to break into overseas markets.

"Small businesses are intimidated by the exporting process - they're afraid of getting paid, they're afraid they won't meet labelling laws," says Mr Hingle.

From the Big Easy to Japan

Even with a robust interest abroad, growth often comes slowly - as it did for Magic Seasonings.

In the beginning, Mr Prudhomme would find another chef to cook with in a foreign country like Japan, where Magic Seasonings was first introduced in 1985.

In that way, he could have someone on the ground who could vouch for the product.

But as the exporting business grew, Mr Prudhomme brought on Anna Zuniga, his director of international sales and marketing, to streamline and grow operations beyond a few chefs scattered across the globe.

Blackened redfish seasoning on the production line

One big change that helped boost sales - and the bottom line - was altering the way that Magic Seasonings was bottled and sold.

"We used to package the seasoning in glass bottles with 24 to a case - but that weighed too much and cost a lot," says Ms Zuniga.

"Now, we package the seasoning in foil bottles that weigh a third as much."

Ms Zuniga says many of the challenges for Magic Seasonings involve foreign regulations on labelling and food standards. This is why she often gets help from government programmes that can offer insights into foreign laws and importing standards, like Susta.

Today, the company's biggest export market is Mexico, followed by the UK and Japan, and it is now looking to expand to India.

Louisiana Spicy

Magic Seasonings does not shy away from its Louisiana roots - and experts say that capitalising on locations with specific reputations, like New Orleans, can help when trying to export a product abroad.

It is a strategy that many in the area are already employing.

Joel Dondis is thinking about helping his dessert company to go global

Joel Dondis runs Sucre, a New Orleans-based dessert chain. He says he is just beginning to think about becoming an exporter, after getting offers of interest from places as far away as Singapore, Dubai and London.

"I think New Orleans has just as much cachet as Paris and I think those things play into exporting," says Dondis. "You need a brand that can carry."

Like Magic Seasonings' Cajun creations, Dondis thinks that his macaroons, chocolates, and King Cakes - a New Orleans speciality - will be popular because of how localised they are, with deep roots in the Louisiana area.

"Distance is not an issue," Dondis says.

"If people want to buy our chocolate bars in Abu Dhabi, I'm going to sell them in Abu Dhabi."

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Small firms which want to profit from doing good

Andrea Sreshta and Anna Stork's Lumin Aid light is already used in 15 countries

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Running a business

• Designs on social media success
• Savvy shops sell by stealth
• Brazil's successful family firms
• Married to the job

Dr Bill Rodriguez has three big, audacious goals.

He wants to solve a major public health need in Africa, prove that he can make a viable business while doing good, and attract great employees who will not have to choose between feeding their families and making a difference in the world.

"It's a lot," he admits. "So far, it's gone OK - better than I would have hoped."

Traditionally, charities and other non-profit organisations have led efforts to provide safe food, water and medications in the developing world.

But Dr Rodriguez is part of a new generation of entrepreneurs and small businesses who see a market in some of the world's poorest communities - despite challenges such as a lack of infrastructure, haphazard government regulations, investor reluctance and the absence of role models.

This growing entrepreneurial interest is particularly evident in Boston and neighbouring Cambridge, Massachusetts, home to Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University and other leading US colleges.

These universities turn out technology that allows devices to get cheaper, smaller, and more portable, and attract innovative people who come from and care about all parts of the globe.

'Improve lives'

Dr Rodriguez, for example, was an infectious disease doctor at Harvard when, on frequent trips to Africa and South East Asia, he noticed a dangerous gap in medical diagnostics.

Bill Rodriguez has struggled with the regulatory side of doing business in Africa

Doctors in Africa can rapidly determine which patients have HIV, and can provide relatively inexpensive medications to those sick enough to need them. But it remains difficult, costly and time-consuming to identify exactly when people with slow-moving HIV should start the drugs.

In most cases, a trained technician must draw blood from the patient and send the sample hundreds of miles away.

It can take weeks to get the results, by which point it's challenging to find the patient and their disease status might already have changed.

Dr Rodriguez, with the help of other academics, developed a prototype that can count the number of a certain immune cell in a patient's blood - a good indication of their HIV state.

The device, which can be used with very little training, provides results in about 10 minutes and costs $5-$10 (£3.20-£6.50) a test.

"We expect to improve lives by getting these out there, and that's huge," says Dr Rodriguez, who founded Daktari Diagnostics in 2008 to market this and other medical devices.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Dr Rodriquez found that working in the developing world presented extra challenges, and assistance was often very difficult to come by.

When Daktari needed help with regulatory issues in Africa, for instance: "We couldn't find anyone who had any idea how to help a start-up do that."

Yet while it would have been cheaper for the company to run its clinical trials in India, Dr Rodriquez said he needed to learn from the countries where Daktari is launching, so on-the-ground trials went ahead in Kenya, Uganda, Botswana and South Africa.

Investment backing

It is always hard to fund a start-up, but Dr Rodriguez said it was particularly difficult to get investors to buy into the idea of a money-making investment in Africa.

Investors and foundations, he said, "know how to work with non-profits and companies trying to make as much money as possible", but not companies like Daktari.

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It requires one to be fairly creative in coming up with a sound business model”

Muhammad ZamanPharmaCheck

That is beginning to change, though. A few venture capital firms are starting to show interest in companies that address the needs of the world's poor.

Shuaib Siddiqui, deputy chief investment officer of Acumen Fund, is already a believer.

When Acumen started backing socially responsible companies 11 years ago, Mr Siddiqui said that they were "one of very few people in town".

"As we've grown up, a whole industry has grown up around us."

Mr Siddiqui says that operating a financially viable company in the developing world requires different skills to those needed in mature economies.

Before he backs a start-up, Mr Siddiqui looks for an entrepreneur who understands local consumers, and is motivated enough to ride out the difficulties that are inherent in this kind of business.

It is not that returns are less in emerging markets, he says, but that more patience is required before they materialise.

Mr Siddiqui says he also looks for a product or service that's truly innovative and has transformative power.

"If this business can [for instance] bring sanitation to the slums, you're talking about a model that could revolutionise not just the one slum, but slums across the world," he says.

Usually, his firm invests early in a start-up's life cycle, providing, say $750,000 to help an experiment reach the next level, and potentially more as the company develops.

Camper fans

Andrea Sreshta and her architecture school classmate Anna Stork considered several different financing approaches when they started their Boston-based company, Lumin Aid.

Their goal was to provide an extra-bright, waterproof, rechargeable light to disaster victims around the world. But so few other companies are in their niche that it took some time to get the structure right, said Ms Sreshta.

Mr Zaman highlights a number of challenges of doing business in the developing world

At first, they hoped to use micro-financing, but that was not a good match, they decided, for a product mostly needed in emergencies.

And though they initially wanted to distribute the lights directly to victims, they realised it didn't make sense to develop a whole new delivery infrastructure with every disaster.

Instead, they discovered that American campers and hunters loved Lumin Aid's light-weight, inflatable light.

Now, online customers are given the option of buying one light for $18.95 (£12.60), or of paying $8 more to donate a second light. The donated light is delivered by a partner organisation that provides broader disaster relief.

So far, the company has donated about 3,500 lights for use in 15 countries.

'Optimistic'

Muhammad Zaman, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, is cobbling together a variety of funding sources - including regulatory agencies, hospitals, foundations, and private companies - for his fledging start-up, PharmaCheck.

Mr Zaman and his colleagues have developed a hand-held device to test medication quality, looking for fakes and compounds that have gone bad. He said 30-40% of anti-malaria drugs are suspicious, and good medications are desperately needed to treat 220 million cases worldwide.

Customers in developing countries are very different than they are in Boston, though, says Mr Zaman.

Many cannot read product descriptions; some are fatalistic about death and figure that if it's their time to go, no product will make a difference. They also lack universal health insurance and patent protection is inconsistent or nonexistent.

"It requires one to be fairly creative in coming up with a sound business model," says Mr Zaman.

Despite the challenges, Mr Siddiqui of Acumen said he still sees great potential in leveraging capitalism to bring about social change.

"The reason I'm in this space is I'm optimistic," he said.

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Insight selling: How retailers sell to us by stealth

Successful small firms are coming up with novel ways to connect with their customers, as the BBC's Jane O'Brien reports from Washington DC

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Running a business

• Designs on social media success
• Brazil's successful family firms
• Married to the job
• Fresh approach to speedy delivery

Jordan Mittelman is obsessed with cycling - a passion he's harnessed to launch an award-winning business in the heart of Washington DC.

The US capital already has a large number of bike shops, and Mr Mittelman knew his High Street store, Bicycle Space, could only succeed by offering customers more than competitive prices and good service.

"People can find all the products we sell online, and are often so well-read and knowledgeable. They've looked up every detail and come in knowing so much," he says.

"To sell to those people you have to appeal to something greater - we're selling a lifestyle and an experience."

Marketers call this insight selling.

"It's learning about the consumer in order to offer the product in a new way that doesn't rely on hard sell," explains Patrick Spenner, managing director of CEB, a global business advisory company that has its headquarters in Washington DC.

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"For example, I'm a cyclist. I cycle to work regularly and I struggle with finding safe paths. Wouldn't it be great if my local bike shop could use digital media to connect me with other consumers to share information about safer routes?

Key marketing trends for 2013

As more companies take advantage of digital platforms and new ways of reaching consumers, marketers have predicted a number of trends that should be important for businesses this year:

Insight selling - Offering lifestyle information about a product that is educational and informative instead of relying on hard sell.

Content marketing - Interactive or digital material that influences a consumer's choice during the research and decision making process.

Thought leadership - Creating the perception that the company is innovative and an expert in its field.

Digital analytics - Using the trail of information consumers create online to shape appealing content and inform insight selling.

"That's bringing 'insight' to me about something broader than just my bike. And it creates an attachment to the business that enabled me to gain that insight."

Mr Mittelman knows his customers enjoy the sense of community he and his staff help to create by organising bike rides and group maintenance workshops.

"People want to be a part of something and come to a place where they'll be taken care of. We're really a social gathering spot and an essential place to learn about bikes, use them and have a good time," he says.

Changed strategy

Garry Cha takes a similar approach to market his grocery chain, Yes! Organic Market, taking time to learn about his customers and understand their lifestyles.

Most people who come through his doors are well-educated and health conscious. They want access to organic produce in a retail space that has the convenience of a corner shop.

Mr Cha opened his first store in 1989 and now operates seven across Washington DC with a $30m (£20m) turnover. But while his products have remained broadly the same, his advertising strategy has changed dramatically.

Bicycle Space secures customer attachment by organising regular group bike rides around the streets of the US capital

"Until about two years ago we put inserts into the Washington Post newspaper offering monthly savings by the truck loads. But we weren't sure we were getting good results - so we stopped, and now spend the same amount of money on social media," he says.

That enables him to reach customers directly and adapt quickly to changing trends. He also invests in sales technology that allows him to monitor what customers are buying.

And rather than promote individual products, the company's website takes an elliptical approach, offering information about health issues and special diets that link to items available in the store.

'Ultimate economy'

By one estimate, 57% of today's consumers have already made up their mind about what they want to buy before entering a store or engaging with a sales team. And the way they obtain their information has blurred the distinction between marketing and advertising.

When Gary Cha started to sell organic produce he had few rivals, but that is no longer the case

Marketers say most consumers are more likely to seek out online reviews or gather expert advice from independent sources rather than listen to a company message.

As a result, the world's multinational companies are joining small businesses in using insight selling.

And where advertising campaigns used to be a single, high-profile event, they now use insight selling to try to establish a continual presence in the consumer's consciousness - which is becoming easier thanks to mobile technology.

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Just because it's digital doesn't mean it always works”

Russell GlassChief Executive, Bizo

In 2010 Volkswagen became the first carmaker to launch a new car in the US entirely on a mobile platform. Research revealed that the target customers - young men - were also avid iPhone users who liked playing games. As a result, Washington-based advertising agency AKQA was commissioned to develop an app for a game featuring the new Golf GTI.

Within five days Real Racing GTI had been downloaded more than 800,000 times and became the number one free app on Apple's iTunes App Store in 36 countries. Downloads have since exceeded 3.7 million.

"It was a minimal investment with a huge impact," says Erik Rogstad, managing director of AKQA.

"It's the ultimate economy - if you have a great viable product. If people like it, it will be found and shared and talked about and the more people will download it. So there's never been a better time from a digital perspective to get new and engaging content out there - especially if you're a small player."

'Elegantly target'

Yet other experts sound a note of caution regarding the benefits of insight selling via the internet and smartphones, especially for small firms.

"Just because it's digital doesn't mean it always works," says Russell Glass, chief executive of San Francisco-based marketing company Bizo.

Bicycle Space owner Jordan Mittleman uses insight selling to compete with online bike sellers

"It's based on the audience you're trying to reach and the product or service you're delivering.

"If your audience is not digital, if they're not consuming content online, then no, it's not important to be digital."

He says many small businesses could do just as well by putting up a sign on the High Street.

Mr Glass also thinks it will take another year before businesses can take full advantage of the benefits of mobile technology because different systems aren't yet fully compatible.

"The opportunity is out there," he says. "But the delivery mechanism and the format isn't - and that's what needs to shift to really make mobile important. For instance viewing a banner ad on a mobile device today is really not a very good experience. You're squinting and your fat thumb is clicking on an ad by mistake.

Digital marketing via an extensive and informative website is a way for some small retailers to get customers through their doors

"But as we start to see more native formats, paid content that is within non-paid content, and people start to figure out how to more elegantly target adds on mobile devices in a more effective way, that is when I think the year of mobile will finally be here. That to me is 2014."

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WTA serves up women's tennis for 40 years

Serena Williams with WTA sponsor Xerox logo in background

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Business of Sport

• Colombia's passion for pedalling
• Keegan launches football training game
• Why money drove Premier League hunt
• From Balco to boxing: a sport on the ropes

A meeting held in a central London hotel 40 years ago had a momentous impact on the business of women's tennis which is still being felt to this day.

When Billie Jean King brought together the top female players of the day back in 1973 and founded the Women's Tennis Association (WTA), she was setting in motion a process which has led to the lucrative endorsements and prize money enjoyed by the stars of today.

"If Billie Jean King had not been in tennis but another sport then women's tennis would not be where it is today," the WTA's chief executive Stacey Allaster told the BBC.

"She had the vision and the courage to form the WTA, and the belief that we could create a successful women's tennis tour."

In her four years at the helm, Allaster has built on those solid foundations - securing a record number of new sponsors and developing new revenue streams, as well as overseeing a global expansion of the women's game.

She has headed a business plan that has brought in more than $210m (£137m) in revenues from 2011 until now, and has also overseen a digital programme for the game which has sought to increase fan participation.

Growing prize money

The WTA now has more than 2,500 players, representing 92 nations, competing at the WTA's 54 events and four Grand Slams in 33 countries, with total prize money this year being some $100m.

In fact there has been a 70% increase in women's prize money since 2009, all tied to the growth in tournament revenues.

"That growth in prize money shows the strength of the women's game. It is defying this global economic downturn that we have been seeing," says Allaster.

Stacey Allaster has more than 20 years of tennis experience

More than 5.4 million people attended women's tennis events in 2012, with millions more watching on television and digital channels.

It means that some of the biggest global brands are eager to be associated with the WTA, and sponsorship money - along with tournament revenues and TV deals - is a major foundation in the business model of the women's game.

Big name backers include Dubai Duty Free, Oriflame, Jetstar, and Western Union. And in February, a "multiyear and multimillion dollar" global sponsorship deal was signed with office equipment maker Xerox.

"Why are our sponsors aligned with the WTA and our athletes?" asks Ms Allaster. "I think it is because we have the best athletes in the world, who are truly global citizens, and who are also major figures in the entertainment world. They transcend sport."

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For me, the most amazing change in sport that we are seeing is fans' consumption of sport - there is such an appetite for content”

Stacey AllasterWTA chief executive

She says the growth in sponsorship revenue has come about because of the needs of global brands to be more diverse.

"Xerox decided to invest in us because it had goals around diversity and emerging markets - we can deliver on both of those," she says. "Also, the growing power of the female consumer means we are seeing more investment in women's sport."

Recently, the WTA celebrated having players from 10 different countries in the global top 10 for the first time ever, and the organisation now has more events in Asia than it does in Europe or the US.

"So there is this true global expansion of women's tennis," adds the Canadian.

"China and the entire Asia Pacific area is a huge opportunity for us. It is a strategic priority for us, and we have increased our event footprint in the area."

Women's tennis in the Asian region was given a significant boost when Li Na, from China, won the French Open title in 2011. Allaster recently called the player "the most important of the decade" in terms of the boost to tennis in Asia that she provides.

"She will be an inspiration and create more Li Nas. But she transcends China, she is the first Asia Pacific champion," says Allaster.

The WTA is also looking to expand in Latin America and hopes to build on, and beyond, the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Maria Sharapova is helping the WTA mark its 40th anniversary this year

In today's digital world, part of Allaster's wider mission is to further encourage input from tennis fans.

"For me, the most amazing change in sport that we are seeing is fans' consumption of sport - there is such an appetite for content," she says.

The WTA is fortunate in having a huge amount of match footage as well as a wealth of off-court, 'back-stage' footage.

"The notion of fan engagement is no longer an optional one. We have 60 million fans and they are using two screens to consume more data, and we - as sports properties - need to share more data with them.

"We want to go deeper for our fans who want more analytics from us."

Player education

However, challenges do remain. Tennis, like all other sports has to remain vigilant in the face of drug abuse and doping.

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There is also the issue of player "grunting" in tennis, with calls from spectators and commentators for something to be done to curb the worse excesses.

Stacey Allaster - sport and business

• Named WTA chairman and chief executive in July 2009
• In 2011, contract extended until 2017
• That will make her the longest-serving chief at WTA to date
• Named by Forbes as one of the most powerful women in sport
• Joined the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour in early 2006 in the newly-created role of President
• A 15-year veteran of Tennis Canada
• Holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics and Physical Education from the University of Western Ontario
• Holds an MBA from the University's Ivey School of Business

"We are going to be working with the governing bodies to drive excessive grunting out of the game," says Allaster. "The plan is about focusing on educating the next generation. My team has been out to international academies and events, and shown the players a video about what the fans think of grunting."

On a parallel path, technicians are looking to a possible alternative that might monitor the volume of grunting, with an acoustic threshold being set.

The WTA has also been absorbing the loss of its title sponsor, Sony Ericsson, at the end of 2012, after a six-year partnership.

"Previously we had a title sponsor, and when they went away our organisation was turned upside down overnight," she says. "We don't have Sony, but we do have diversified revenue sources, and we are moving through it incredibly well.

"We had built up reserves for a rainy day and... we have been aggressive over the past three years in creating new assets."

These include the new event series, the Tournament of Champions, which is being held in Bulgaria this year.

Former greats such as WTA founder Billie Jean King will be honoured this summer

She has also created a new level of professional events, the WTA 125 series, which launched last year, and is a second highest level of women's competition. The series helps meet the demand from cities around the world that want to host a WTA event.

Meanwhile, Allaster is looking ahead positively. This year has seen the launch of the 40 Love programme, to celebrate those days of 1973, with a special event featuring ex-players being held on the middle Sunday of this year's Wimbledon tournament.

"We are a very ambitious organisation but we are not complacent. I am very pleased that we have come strongly through these difficult economic times," says Allaster.

"We are in both the sport and entertainment market places, and are energised about where we want to take things to the next level."

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