On small deformations of balanced manifolds

We introduce a property of compact complex manifolds under which the existence of balanced metric is stable by small deformations of the complex structure. This property, which is weaker than the $\partial\overline\partial$-Lemma, is characterized in terms of the strongly Gauduchon cone and of the first $\partial\overline\partial$-degree measuring the difference of Aeppli and Bott-Chern cohomologies with respect to the Betti number $b_1$.