Know-How Exchange : Branding

The only way i forsee is direct salesmanship. Knock on doors and sell your newspaper, telling readers why they MUST have your paper and what the direct benefits to them are by engaging in it. The cost of this is time, but any small business trying to increase brand awareness and boost sales must make this initial sacrifice. Word of mouth will hopefully circulate, which is essentially free advertising after the initial sales project.

If you have any questions, or have a small/limited cash budget that you may be able to inject, please reply and i'll attempt to advise further.

Good luck!

Try to carry some branding strategies with small budget in order to create uniqueness and brand recognition.
So besides your brand 'newspaper name' also include a tag line - three to four words and place always with the name. Design logo if you use just name with out attraction.
Then most important is focus on relationship with customers. You said that small business of newspaper, it means you sell to limited customers. So survey from them and try to understand what they want most, the type of news plus gossip they interesting to read. then talk with them about price factor and also do some little research as a customer about competition other local newspaper.
If you create a niche - small segment than better enough to manage, otherwise focus on target market - segmentation.
Train your sales people how to create and manage relationship with customers. Also try to create some online presence means promote your brand in social media and talk to potential customers. Raise your voice in online forums and news and tweet about your newspaper too.
No strategy small or big, the only need is the implementation. You need to do persistent efforts. as your customers increase , your profit also increases and you better invest more to brand.
Thanks

I was briefly head of marketing for a business newspaper in the US. We also had a limited budget. One advantage of a niche newspaper is that your journalists may often "scoop" more general journalists. Make sure you promote your scoops.

Identify blogs that fit with your business "beats". Encourage your journalists to comment on them, or start blogs of your own.

Try free sampling. Pay young people to congregate in front of business centers during the morning rush hour and hand out free copies of the paper. Ideally, these people should be "branded" with T-shirts that have your paper's name on them.

Good luck.

Is this the exclusive source of information for the niche?
Are you providing information that the niche needs to see as soon as it's printed?
Do your articles spur on conversation / reaction?
Is your newspaper shared by multiple readers?

To boost circulation, you need something worth paying for, something that people must want / need to read to stay "current". Something that people want to keep for a week and constantly refer to.