I find myself thinking a lot about teeth lately. No, I’m not dreaming about my teeth falling out due to some Freudian anxiety. The topic of pearly whites has been on my mind heavily since May, when Balihoo formally launched a marketing program with Nobel Biocare’s top dental practices. I could easily ramble for pages about the topic of marketing dental implants and other fee-for-service dental procedures in this blog, but then, well, I’d be rambling. So I will stick to the salient points.

1. The public is not well educated on dental implants. Meanwhile, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22% of Americans age 65+ have had all of their natural teeth extracted. Are dentures their only option? No, there is a fixed prosthetic product that mimics their natural teeth and deters bone degeneration. Voila! - dental implants! No more dealing with PoliGrip! The FDA cleared dental implant procedures in 1982, but my mind only recalls Apple Macintosh, cellular phones and Prozac when I think of inventions in the 80s. It’s time to go to market.

2.  If marketing direct-to-consumer is considered faux pas in the healthcare industry, how will the American public learn about this procedure? Our TVs, magazines and billboards are peppered with advertisements for Lasik surgery, pharmaceutical drugs and even Botox. Come on, even Bob Dole went on air promoting Erectile Dysfunction. When B2C media campaigns are executed tastefully for dental implants, our dental practice clients are not only seeing an increase in patients filling their chairs, they are doing a service to their community by educating them on a quality of life enhancing alternative to dentures. This brings me to point #3…

3. Enhancing your quality of life. I have nightmares of my grandmother putting her dentures in a sock in a dresser. She was embarrassed by them. Baby boomers want to feel young for life; have their steak and eat it too. And with this age group being the fastest segment of online adopters, you better believe they are researching healthcare online. If nowhere else, dental implant specialists should market this procedure in a website well-optimized in the search engines and engage in pay-per-click campaigns.

4. With innovations like sedation dentistry and lasers, these procedures are virtually pain free. Check out the testimonial video clips from these two practices with which we work: http://MySmileToday.com and http://NoDentures.com.

The Wall Street Journal published an article on August 11 titled “Dentists Step Up Marketing as Patients Skip Their Visits.” I end this blog with the following thought by Dr. Wong, a general dentist interviewed in the article, “You can’t go to the office and just be a dentist anymore; you have to go to the office and be a dentist and a CEO.” In other words, you need to go to the office and be a dentist and a marketer.

Sometimes I find myself wishing that marketing and media placement was as black and white as some business owners tend to prefer to believe. We routinely hear “Well, I heard that no one should be using (fill in the blank - newspaper/online/circulars/cable, etc.) anymore due to (fill in the blank – price, reach, frequency, etc.) so therefore, I don’t think I should either.”

Such broad statements simply don’t make sense in the marketing arena - while newspaper might not be the best route to take for store owner ‘X’ whose local audience tends to bypass print in exchange for online – store owner ‘Y’ might live in a city three states over and have a target audience that routinely subscribes to newspapers and local magazines. Or perhaps, store owner ‘Z’ lives in an rural area with one or two radio stations that are very popular among his target audience…see where I am going with this?

At Balihoo, we are continually asked “Well, what media outlets should we [meaning ALL associated franchisees and affiliates across the country] be using - search, newspaper, direct mail OR email?” While at its root, this is a seemingly good question, a better question (and one that will solicit a worthwhile answer) is “What should I be doing in my local market?” Determining the correct answer to this question will skyrocket your business and boost your ROI. Balihoo’s media team exists to help affiliates and franchisees across the country determine the answer to this question.

Not ready to have a media planner help lay out a plan for your local area? Take a minute to consider the following:

1. Who is your target audience?

2. Where does your target audience seek out local information/product/service providers?

3. As a member of the local community, where do YOU look for goods and services (online, newspaper, cable, radio, etc.?)

4. How many of your past or current customers reported seeing your past advertisements?

5. If not many – how might you get that message in front of them and their neighbors/friends?

Understanding the importance of these questions and putting their answers to use would be a great step toward improving your local advertising success.

I recently returned from the Flooring America Summer Convention in Orlando, FL. Flooring America members get together twice a year with their corporate counterparts to discuss the state of business, national/local marketing strategies, latest product offering, etc.

Balihoo has been working with Flooring America for over a year, now, and this was the third convention I had attended. At the various functions and education sessions, it was great to be greeted and treated as a proven and valued partner. A year ago, as one of the “new kids on the block,” Balihoo was met with quizzical expressions and natural skepticism by the membership. We’ve come such a long way, together, and I can’t wait to see how the relationship continues to deepen over the next six months in advance of the Winter Convention.

The appetite for media planning services, in particular, was extremely encouraging. Times are tough for retailers, but those who invest in intelligent local marketing now, will reap the benefits as the economy stabilizes. This is Balihoo’s expertise, and we look forward to helping Flooring America (and all of our clients) position themselves well for the turn-around.

Pretty exciting news for us - today we announced $7M in new funding from OpenView Venture Partners.  We’ve seen some great coverage of the story - and I’ll past the whole announcement here.  Thanks for all the congratulations! 

Balihoo Secures $7 Million in New Funding

Local Marketing Automation Provider Expects 5X Year-Over-Year Revenue Growth as National Brands Look to Drive Local Demand Generation.  

Boise, ID  August 27, 2009 – Balihoo (www.balihoo.com), the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to franchises and national brands with local marketing needs, today announced it has secured $7 million in new funding.  Led by OpenView Venture Partners, this investment will enable Balihoo to expand sales and marketing efforts as it continues to build its impressive roster of national clients. 

“Balihoo offers national brands with local advertising a unique platform that enhances brand image nationally while creating demand locally,” said Scott Maxwell, OpenView’s Managing Partner and Senior Managing Director.  “Their growing customer base speaks highly of the Balihoo solution and the Balihoo team is passionate about building a great company by making each of their customers successful.  Their results and approach are well aligned with OpenView and we are proud to be an investor.”

Balihoo’s solution combines industry-leading technology, sophisticated local marketing strategy and world-class media execution to bring highly effective and brand-compliant local marketing to affiliates and franchisees of national brands.  By making it easy to create, plan and implement local advertising campaigns, Balihoo reduces local marketing costs while at the same time improving local marketing effectiveness and return-on-investment.

“OpenView stood out amongst all other potential capital providers primarily based on the value-added services they provide,” said Pete Gombert, Balihoo’s CEO.  “Balihoo is growing quickly; we’re coming off of four consecutive quarters of double-digit compound revenue growth and we were impressed with OpenView’s history of helping software companies quickly and effectively scale to meet rising demand.” 

Gombert continued, “Since the launch of our LMA platform last year we have been experiencing massive customer demand.  Brands are struggling to reach consumers in an efficient and effective manner, traditional techniques alone are not getting the job done and brands are turning to our platform as the next evolution in local marketing.”

OpenView Venture Partners joins existing Balihoo investors Highway 12 Ventures and Lacuna Gap Capital, who together supplied the company’s initial capital and also contributed to the funding announced today. 

About Balihoo

Balihoo (www.balihoo.com) is the premier provider of Local Marketing Automation technology and services to franchises and national brands with local marketing needs. Balihoo brings enterprise-class marketing to the local level and gives national brands full visibility into all local marketing activities and results.

Learn more about Balihoo and Local Marketing Automation by requesting the Local Marketing Automation white paper at www.balihoo.com/lma.

About OpenView Venture Partners 

OpenView Venture Partners is an expansion stage venture capital fund with a focus on high-growth software, Internet, and technology-enabled companies. Through its staff of seasoned operating executives who collectively bring several decades of technology & management experience to the firm, OpenView is able to help portfolio companies with quickly ramping up sales, marketing and product development functions to best practice levels. The firm was founded in 2006 by Scott Maxwell with an inaugural fund encompassing $100 million in committed capital. OpenView Venture Partners is based in Boston, and invests on a worldwide basis.

Undoubtedly one of the best parts of my job is learning more about our client’s business.  Often times, we are only engaged in marketing and advertising discussions and are not privy to the details of their over-arching objectives and business problems faced daily.  By getting a glimpse into new product lines, pricing concerns and inventory management, it allows us, as marketers to make more informed recommendations.  It allows us to take into consideration outside influences and ensure we think beyond the best price for a media impression and which local news website to purchase during their next campaign.

Last week we had this opportunity at Carpet One Floor and Home’s Summer Convention in Orlando.  Balihoo had the chance to meet members we regularly communicate with via email and phone conversations and spend time with them learning more about their business. Not only were we able to discuss marketing needs, but we had the opportunity to visit with their other vendors and product line representatives to gain more knowledge about the business decisions they make on a daily basis.  It was the perfect opportunity to remind ourselves that for most of our client’s, marketing is not their main concern or expertise.

Our focus at Balihoo is to provide customized marketing solutions and recommendations that deliver against traffic and sales objectives while taking into consideration budget concerns, local market nuances and media efficiencies.  By gaining first-hand knowledge of members remaining business challenges we are better positioned to tailor every recommendation to each of our client’s individual needs.

From Balihoo:  Thanks for being here Nik, your intelligence, attitude and contribution to the business was appreciated and you’ll be missed.  Also - your contribution to the Balihoo softball team was legendary.   

Here it is, just a few months late, an updated tour of our offices!  You can also see some of the in-process pictures and get some of the design details straight from our talented designers site:  Guigon Olson Studios.   

Agile software development in a startup is fast, challenging, exciting and dynamic however one of the hardest things to accomplish in this environment are  predictability and repeatability.  When teams start agile development the first sprint(s) can often be disastrous, and lead to abandonment.  The easiest way to build predictability into the process is to think about a Agile development as a simple supply (engineering resources) and demand (product needs) relationship.  The key is to increase the accuracy on both sides of the equation.  

When you read literature on Agile development there are a couple of standard techniques suggested to improve predictability:

• Triangulation:  The process of tracking estimates and then when a ‘like’ feature comes up you use previous estimates to triangulate in on a reasonable estimate. 
• Cycle Velocity: Teams track velocity or points throughput over a given (short) development cycle, and uses this as a starting point for the next cycle.

Great!  except that in practice these are marginally effective at first.  One of the things we have found to be a great step forward on the demand-side estimates was to create better definition around the base estimation factor.  Estimation, and product throughput in agile development is typically measured in ‘points’. There are different schools of though on how a point is defined. Through time and experience we have found the following definition works best for us:  A point is one day’s worth of development time with little to no interruptions by a senior software developer.

With a more defined based estimation factor we then added complexity multipliers to our user stories (feature requests) to help with triangulation.  Often we would get bogged down in a lot of what if discussion which is good, but often created angst among the developers when trying to create estimates. We moved to a model where estimates were stated as best-case, and then we would add multipliers for both technical complexity and business complexity to generate a risk adjusted estimate in addition to the best case.

Now what about the supply-side?  Often overlooked, but just as important…If not analyzed correctly it can create an overworked engineering team.  Of course in a startup, everyone is overworked, but the key is sustainability. Especially with small teams and short development cycles small supply-side ‘events’ can wreak havoc on predictable product throughput. We have found that the following items need to be effectively factored into the supply-side calculation:

• Team member skill levels
• Vacation time
• Overhead/support needs

Every team member starts out with a baseline FTE (full time equivalent) value of 1.  First we start by adjusting the baseline value down to adjust for skill differences in junior resources. Any vacation days that the engineer will be taking during the sprint cycle are then factored in, as well as the expected % overhead (P1 bugs, production support)  that each resource will be expected to cover during the cycle. Calculated out for each resource and then added the numbers together gives you a net FTE count for the team, which can then be multiplied against the days in the sprint to give you a baseline supply estimate.

During sprint planning we then begin estimating against the demand until you hit a number where the supply-side estimate is approximately sitting between the demand-side best case estimate and the risk adjusted estimate (assuming some stories will work out closer to best case and some will work out closer to worst case). 

These minor enhancements along with team experience have allowed us to create an extremely predicable product development process, that is not only repeatable but also sustainable.  All critical in startup product management and software development.

If this concept interests you - let me known and I can send you the spreadsheet template.

As I was riding my bike to work today (like I do most days) down a crowded 4 lane one way street in Boise, i noticed a police car flip its lights on from one of the middle lanes. Respectfully all of the traffic stopped and let the officer maneuver his cruiser across two lanes to the far left lane. Once there the officer turned the lights off and settled back into traffic as if nothing had happened. A few seconds later the cruiser turned left (without using a signal) and headed on its merry way. I was instantly intrigued, amused and slightly angered at the nearly simultaneous abuse of power (using the rollers to change lanes) and hypocrisy (turning without a signal), that this officer had displayed in a matter of 30 seconds.

By making this small decision this officer had more than likely reinforced the stereotype that officers believe themselves to be “above the law”, to the 30 or 40 people who were affected by his actions. I am convinced that he had not thought through this potential consequence when he exercised his power, just like many people don’t when they make decisions. The point is that we all need to be thoughtful about our decisions on a daily basis and ensure that we are only using our power and position when necessary. And when exercising the powers of our position (as a manager, parent, customer service representative, or whatever) to do it with humility and respect for the people it will have a consequence on.