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Prop2Go triples staff as it battles Craigslist and Kijiji

In 18 months Jason Richard, owner of Prop2Go, hopes to be running the leading apartment listings service in most major Canadian cities.

"I want to become the name to know if you're going to find rental property," Richard says.

In preparation, the 30-year-old recently tripled his staff by hiring eight new sales and marketing people. The new team will be helping develop and implement a plan to break into the Ottawa and Toronto markets before moving west to Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver in about six to 12 months time. Richard plans to target landlords with more than 100 units.

The Saint John-based online listings business, which launched in January 2007, has done well in the Port City, Fredericton, Moncton and Halifax, now getting 200,000 to 300,000 hits per month.

But with an aggressive marketing campaign planned for the expansion, Prop2Go, which had $180,000 in revenue last year, is looking to raise between $250,000 and $500,000 by selling shares of the privately held company.

"We were profitable last year," Richard says.

"Which is saying a lot that we were profitable in year two."

He wouldn't reveal the firm's operating cost for 2008.

Kerry Munro, a Toronto-based digital marketing consultant and former managing director of Yahoo in Canada, says locally focused websites are growing.

But with plenty of competition for apartment listings, Munro says Prop2Go will have get enough listings from landlords to make the site interesting for renters.

"In order for them to be successful they're going to have to"¦ find some value proposition that others don't provide," Munro says.

"The faster they can build their scale and quality the more success they will have in the long run."

Richard says because Prop2Go is aimed specifically at rental listings, it provides a better service than free classified websites such as Kijiji or Craigslist.

The site can filter apartments based on 14 different features. Prop2Go users can also set up alerts, and the site keeps all information on file for landlords' convenience the next time the apartment is on the market.

Richard, a software developer by trade, is working on a nine-month research and development project aimed to make the site more user friendly.

On Kijiji and Craigslist, posts can be buried within hours since listings get bumped down as others come in. But Richard says Prop2Go is going to be different.

"They're still going to be able to find you (even if the listing is buried) because their going to have the tools on there that make it easy to search for property online," he says.

To get landlords and renters interested Richard's marketing campaign will be mainly online, including a heavy social media component.

But he also plans to use radio and print ads to get the word out, as well as attend events and meet with large landlords.

Richard says he will likely hire sales and marketing people in the targeted cities in the coming months.