Hispanic Heritage Month Is Over. Here Is Your Year Round Hispanic Marketing Plan

October 15 came and went, and for a lot of brands, so did their Latino marketing. The playlist got archived, the papel picado graphics went back in the folder, and the budget line closed.

Your Latino customers are still here. They are shopping for the holidays right now.

How do you market to Hispanic consumers beyond Hispanic Heritage Month?

Treat Latino audiences as a permanent part of your core plan. Give them a standing budget line, a calendar built around the moments they celebrate all year, and research you refresh every quarter. Heritage Month can stay as one beat in that plan; it cannot be the whole plan.

Why is a once a year campaign a weak strategy?

Start with the size of the audience. The U.S. Hispanic population reached 70.1 million in 2025 (Pew Research Center).

Then look at spending. The 2026 U.S. Latino Economic Impact Report from the Latino Donor Collaborative and Arizona State University puts Latino household consumption at $2.8 trillion in 2024. That makes it the third largest consumer market in the world, ahead of Germany and India. Latinos, about one fifth of the population, drove 28.2% of U.S. economic growth that year, and they formed 92.6% of all new U.S. households in 2025 (ASU W. P. Carey School of Business).

Now compare that with where the money goes. A Katz Radio Group analysis found that Hispanic targeted advertising is about 4% of total U.S. ad spending, up from roughly 3% in 2000 (Inside Radio). Four cents of every ad dollar, for one in five Americans.

Marketing leaders at large brands say the same thing. At the Hispanic Marketing Council's summit in April, Alexa Bosley, who leads coffee marketing at Nestlé USA, said that limiting Hispanic efforts to Heritage Month "isn't just insufficient; it actively undermines the goal." She added: "A single in-market test is not a strategy" (HispanicAd).

Think about how Puerto Rico does Christmas. The season starts with parrandas after Thanksgiving, runs through Noche Buena and Three Kings Day, and keeps going into the Octavitas in January. Nobody shows up for one night and calls themselves familia. A brand that appears once a year is the primo who only calls when he needs a ride to the airport. People notice, and they remember.

What should a year round Hispanic marketing plan include?

You can start before the holidays with four moves.

1. Give it a standing budget

Move Latino marketing out of the "special project" column. Put a line in every quarter's budget and name one person who owns it. Money that has to be fought for every September gets cut first.

2. Build the calendar from your audience's year

Heritage Month is one date. Your customers also have Día de los Muertos, Noche Buena, Three Kings Day on January 6, Mother's Day on May 10 for many Mexican families, graduation and quinceañera season, back to school, and the local festivals in your own city. Map the ones that fit your product and plan content for each, the same way you plan for Black Friday.

3. Speak the way your customer actually talks

Latinos are not one audience. Americans of Mexican descent are 57% of the U.S. Latino population (ASU W. P. Carey School of Business), and a Mexican American family in San Antonio does not talk like a Boricua in Orlando or a Dominican family in Washington Heights. Some of your customers prefer English, some Spanish, many switch between both in the same sentence. Test the language and the references, and have a fluent person from that community review anything before it runs.

4. Measure it every month

Track your Latino customers as their own segment: who buys, what they buy, which channels bring them in, and how often they come back. Bosley's point was that relevance comes from a series of tests over time. You can only run a series if you are keeping score.

How can small businesses and nonprofits do this on a small budget?

You do not need a national media buy. Start with what you already have.

Look at your own data first. Your CRM, email list and sales records can show you which neighborhoods, products and channels already bring in Latino customers. If you don't collect language preference, add the field.

Then work with people your audience already trusts: Latino owned media in your area, community organizations, local creators and small business associations. Pay creators fairly and keep working with the good ones for months, so your audience sees the same faces more than once.

Finally, reuse your work. One customer story can become a social post, an email, a Spanish language radio spot and a page on your website, spread across the year.

Key takeaways

• Latino households are a $2.8 trillion consumer market and formed 92.6% of new U.S. households in 2025.
• Hispanic targeted ads get about 4% of U.S. ad spending, far below the audience's share of the population.
• A standing budget and a named owner keep the work alive after October.
• Build your content calendar around the moments your customers celebrate all year.
• Write for the specific community you serve, and measure results every month.

Where does CAMI Studio fit?

CAMI Studio builds multicultural marketing strategy for brands, nonprofits and institutions that want to reach Latino audiences all year: audience research, bilingual messaging, content calendars and the reporting that shows what is working. Explore our services, or start with CAMI OS, our diagnostic that shows where your marketing stands before you commit to a plan.

FAQ

When is Hispanic Heritage Month?

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15 each year in the United States. It is a good moment for a campaign, and it works best as one part of a plan that runs all twelve months.

Should I market to Hispanic customers in Spanish or English?

It depends on who your customers are. Many U.S. Latinos are bilingual, and preferences vary by age, country of origin and how long a family has been in the U.S. Test both languages, look at your own response data, and keep a fluent reviewer from the community in the process.

How much of my marketing budget should go to Hispanic consumers?

There is no single right number. A useful starting point is to compare the share of your customers, or your target market, who are Latino with the share of your marketing budget that reaches them. If the first number is much bigger than the second, that gap is your plan for next year.

---

Cover photo: Ameliebarajas, via Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons CC0 1.0. Displayed cropped to fit.