The locksmith year: when lockouts spike, when they die, and a slow-season plan that fills the gaps
Lockouts follow the weather and the calendar. A month-by-month view of locksmith demand, the planned work that fills slow weeks, and a marketing plan for each stretch.
Lockouts do not arrive evenly. They spike on the first hard freeze when car doors ice shut, on the first hot week when people leave the car running with the AC on and the door locks behind them, on the Friday after Thanksgiving, and every single day of August when every apartment lease in the country turns over at once. Then January comes, nobody goes anywhere, and the phone goes quiet for three weeks.
A locksmith who only does lockouts lives on that curve. A locksmith who fills the troughs with planned work has a business. Here is the year, and what to run in each part of it.
The curve, roughly
- January to mid-February: the trough. Cold, post-holiday, people stay home. Lockouts down 20 to 35% from the autumn peak in most northern markets. Commercial work holds up; new fiscal years mean facilities budgets.
- March to May: climbing. Spring real estate, first moves, graduation and rental turnover starting. Rekeys pick up.
- June to September: the peak. Moves, leases, vacations, hot cars, kids with keys, back-to-school. August is the busiest month for most shops.
- October to December: strong then fading. Holiday travel lockouts, first freezes, safes before the holidays, then a dead last week of December.
Your market will shift this a month either way. Pull your own invoices by month for the last two years and you will see your curve.
What fills the troughs
Planned work has its own calendar, and most of it peaks when lockouts do not.
- Landlord and property manager rekeys. Lease turnover is heaviest in summer, but managers plan in winter. A flat per-unit turnover rate pitched in January gets you on the list for August.
- Commercial door hardware. Closers, panic bars, levers, access control. Fire inspections run year round; facilities managers spend in Q1 and Q4.
- Safes. Tax refund season (February to April) and November to December.
- Smart locks. Steady, with bumps around the holidays and when a new homeowner moves in.
- Automotive keys. Steadier than lockouts, with a winter bump from fobs dying in the cold and a summer bump from keys lost at lakes and beaches.
- Realtor relationships. Spring and early summer. A realtor who hands your card to every buyer at closing is worth a dozen Google clicks.
The plan, by stretch
January to February: sell the year ahead. Email and text your past customers: a rekey or smart lock offer, and a note that you do safes. Cold-call property managers with the turnover plan; the services page on appointment setting describes what a week of that looks like. Shift Google Ads budget from lockout terms toward "rekey", "commercial locksmith" and "safe". Post on the Google profile weekly about a commercial job or a safe install. Run the slowest weeks on Meta with a landlord offer at $15 a day.
March to May: catch the movers. Facebook ad to recently moved homeowners with a rekey price. Drop cards at every realtor office in your area. Review push: ask on every job, because the summer map pack is decided by the reviews you earn in spring. Google Ads lockout budget back to full by May.
June to September: answer the phone. Do not launch anything. Full Google Ads lockout budget, 24-hour listing only if staffed, text-back on every missed call, because this is when a missed call costs the most. Hire the part-time dispatcher for July and August if you ever will. Bank cash.
October to December: safes and freezes. Safe offer to past customers in early November. A "frozen lock and dead fob" post on the profile at the first cold snap. Holiday-travel lockout coverage: say your Thanksgiving weekend hours on the profile, because 50.7% of locksmith listings show no hours and the traveler who is locked out at a rental house on Friday night taps whoever says "Open".
Budget across the year
If you spend $18,000 a year on advertising, do not spend $1,500 every month. Spend $2,200 in May through September on lockouts and automotive, $900 in January and February on commercial and rekeys through Meta and email, and the balance in the shoulder months. Lockout clicks in January cost the same as in August and bring half the calls. The Google Ads guide covers the campaign split.
Use the trough to fix what the peak exposes
Every August you notice the same things: the site is slow, the review count is stuck, the price sheet is out of date, nobody answered that Tuesday at 5 p.m. January is when you fix them. Four jobs, one per week: rebuild the service pages with prices, set up the review ask and the text-back, clean up the Google profile, and write the price list for the year. The website guide and reviews guide are the checklists.
Frequently asked
Should I shut off Google Ads in January? Not off, down. Keep brand terms and commercial terms running, cut lockout bids by a third, and move the saved budget into commercial and rekey work. Switching off entirely loses the account history that keeps your costs low in spring.
What is the fastest planned work to add if I only do lockouts today? Rekeys for new homeowners and landlords. The equipment is a pinning kit you already own, the ticket is $95 to $200, and the customers come from Facebook, realtors and your own past lockout list.
How do I know which months are slow for my shop? Export your invoices or your bank deposits by month for two years and chart them. Thirty minutes of work that will change how you spend for the rest of your career.
If you would rather hand off the seasonal campaigns, email and SMS and Meta ads are both in the free 14-day trial. No card, text or call.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, locksmith businesses among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor