Like a lot of kids, I went through a phase where making a movie seemed like the greatest possible thing in the world. I had seen enough Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies. How hard could it be?
After rounding up a group of mildly interested friends, the next step was obvious.Find somebody with access to a video camera.
My heart was in the right place, but by thinking production first and story second, I was letting the tail wag the dog. What would be the point if I didn’t know what I wanted to shoot once I had the camera?
Unfortunately, there are plenty of B2B brands that approach video the same way. They’re pretty sure they need video – it’s what their competitors are doing, it’s one of the few formats that still moves the needle on social media, etc. – but they don’t necessarily know how to do it.
B2B brands have to explain complicated products to multiple stakeholders, often over months of consideration. Video can help, but only if it makes that complexity easier to understand.
Matt Cornelison has seen it time and time again. As the founder and managing director of Fungi Media, he’s worked with dozens of B2B tech, healthcare, and Fortune 1000 companies to help them crack the code of what it takes to make the right video. That is, the one that tells their story.
For that they’ll need a camera eventually, but first they need a strategy. Because reach is hard in B2B, but resonance is even harder. Here are some of Matt’s tips for getting there.
For Matt and his team at Fungi, a strategic approach to determining if video makes sense starts with asking a few pointed questions:
The answer to that last question may or may not be video. But even if it is, video is still just one tool within a broader content-marketing strategy, not the strategy itself.
“Strategically, video isn’t different from any other content,” Matt notes. “That’s why it’s important to remember to start with a strategy versus the medium.”
Different business objectives, in other words, call for different types of content, which is why Fungi determines where video fits by mapping out a content roles matrix that defines four objectives:
The goal of this exercise is simple: make sure you’re starting with what the business needs, not what format happens to be popular at any given time.
Smaller brands face another layer of complexity in the video debate: limited budgets and bandwidth. Put simply, consistently producing high-quality video can be difficult for smaller brands. In these cases, a video podcast or expert-led series can be seen as a budget-friendly “minimum viable” opportunity.
Before the groans about “starting another podcast” get too loud, Matt stresses that this is all about creating a platform for founders and subject-matter experts to demonstrate expertise. It may not be flashy, but a video podcast can get multiple jobs done:
“Think about it less like another podcast and more like a platform to help you show up as the expert in the room,” Matt says.
One important note on this DIY, lo-fi approach: While a phone camera or easy virtual-recording platform can help make video more accessible, it won’t necessarily make it effective. Quality, authenticity, and storytelling still matter.
Most companies, he says, spend about 80% of their time talking about product or company information, and only about 20% discussing the concerns of their audience. Matt says it’s a B2B content miss that’s more common than people think.
When you think about it, it’s easy to understand why so many companies fall into this trap. Companies are naturally proud of what they’ve built and want to explain it in depth. Founders and salespeople know their product deeply, and they assume audiences will want to hear everything about how it works.
“We have this idea that people are going to listen to everything that we have to say about our own products, and the reality is that nobody really cares,” Matt says.
There’s nothing wrong with having pride in your work, of course, but it’s important to remember the purpose of making a video in the first place. That’s why Matt believes the better approach is to flip that 80-20 ratio by starting with the audience's questions, needs, concerns, and desired outcomes, then introducing the product as the answer.
A clear value proposition still matters.
Product details still matter.
But they need to be presented in the context of why the audience should care.
The bottom line: Your audience cares about what your product can do for them, not simply about the product itself.
Matt and his team at Fungi know better than most the importance of professional production quality. With so much video being consumed these days, your audience probably expects a minimum level of production value. But polished visuals can’t compensate for unclear messaging.
It’s like setting out to build a beautiful building. No matter how pretty you try to make it, if you skip the blueprint, the structure still won't work. Matt says to think of your video the same way, with narrative order being the blueprint.
“We still need to answer the questions that our audience has in the order that they have them,” he explains, laying out a simple structure for doing so:
It sounds almost too straightforward, but Matt says it’s important to remember that clarity isn't boring. And confusing an audience isn't the same as creating mystery.
It all comes back to the idea of storytelling. Familiar narrative structures work because audiences intuitively understand them.
Let’s face it, the audience you’re trying to reach has limited time. They’re surrounded by competing information. And they’re often distracted within seconds. That’s why Matt can’t stress enough that every video should communicate one thing.
“We need to understand that audiences have no time and they don't care,” he says. “And there's tons of noise and their phone is distracting them, and you have about three seconds to get their attention.”
Many B2B companies are tempted to include every supporting detail in their videos because they believe the audience needs to know it all. But Matt believes what you really need is:
Supporting information can reinforce your one thing, but it shouldn't compete with it. It’s about clarity, which is even more crucial for B2B buying decisions where multiple stakeholders and complex products are involved.
Just as “Who has a camera?” was the wrong question to start with as a 10-year-old looking to kick off my filmmaking career, “What video should we make?” is the wrong question for a B2B company looking to get into video.
A better approach: start with “what are we trying to accomplish, who are we trying to reach, and what is the one thing they need to understand?” Answering these questions will provide the blueprint for a solid piece of marketing content, not just a video.
Because as Matt has told plenty of Fungi customers, video isn't automatically the right answer for every company or every objective. But when video is the right tactic, its effectiveness depends less on saying everything and more on saying the right thing, to the right audience, in the right order.
That’s how clarity turns into resonance.