My niece has been one to keep a hot sauce bottle in her purse long before Beyoncé mentioned it. She doesn’t settle for mediocre flavor and has a backup to defend against bland experiences.

Bland experiences. That struck me – and yes, this is a business analogy so brace yourself.

I was working on a framework to describe how we approach clients who are doing bland and random acts of marketing. Their randomness and safety results in bland content and the Marketing team repeatedly needing to defend their impact.

As with all good memorable frameworks, you start with the actionable steps and then you find a clear and logical way to express them. If you’re lucky, it’s a word that fits the occasion. (Like my book CASH)

In this case it was SAUCE.

“We put that s*** on everything!” – Frank’s Red Hot

When you’re not sure if your current content plan is working…

Put some S.A.U.C.E. on it.

— A. Lee Judge

The SAUCE Framework

1. Strategy – What strategic priority does this content support? Is it visibility, brand lift, lead generation, thought leadership, or relationship‑building? You must answer this first.

2. Audience – Who is this for, and where do they consume information? Your audience may not just be the consumers of your product. They could be the buyers, influencers, or partners. Know exactly who they are and examine their content‑consumption hangouts. The content you need to create may change depending on these answers.

3. Users – Who internally needs this and how will they use it? Are you developing this for just the customer or do you also need to make it for the Sales team, partners, distributors, or internal education?

4. Contribution – How does this content contribute to business progress and revenue impact? We use “contribute” because “attribute” is a trap. First decide where you want your content to impact, then add that back into the strategy plan to make sure the content moves the intended needle.

5. Execution – How will this be created, distributed, and used consistently? Knowing what to make is one thing – knowing how to make it is another. Once it’s made, there must be a distribution and consistency plan to keep the content machine moving. Not just cranking out content, but creating the right content for all of the right reasons and distributing to the right places.

If your content marketing doesn’t leave a good taste in the mouth of your leadership, you need to put some SAUCE on it. If you need help, we’ll keep a fresh bottle available for you.

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About A. Lee Judge

A. Lee Judge is a keynote speaker on sales and marketing and the author of CASH: The 4 Keys to Better Sales, Smarter Marketing, and a Supercharged Revenue Machine. With 20 years of enterprise experience, he is sought after by sales and marketing leaders and is the founder of Content Monsta, a B2B video and podcast production company. Revenue teams book A. Lee Judge for company kickoff events, SKOs, RKOs, and executive meetings. He delivers practical frameworks that align sales and marketing, connect content to revenue, and drive measurable results. As a sales and marketing speaker and advisor, he equips teams with actions they can use right away.