Auram
Atelier.

Auram is a six-year-old fine-jewelry atelier with a steady walk-in business and a small but loyal e-commerce trickle. The owners had spent the previous 18 months running Google Ads in-house, getting a respectable ROAS on paper but converting almost entirely on sub-₹40k pieces — not the high-margin custom commissions that pay the studio's rent.

The brief was unusual. We weren't asked to spend more or get cheaper clicks. We were asked to actively block the wrong customer from clicking.

The first month was almost entirely subtractive. We rewrote the keyword tree to exclude every variation of 'cheap', 'affordable', 'under ₹X', and 'EMI' — and added negative match terms for every competitor brand that sells under the ₹50k mark. Click volume dropped 64% immediately. Average order value started climbing the next week.

We then rebuilt the landing pages to qualify in. The product hero shows price up-front, the consultation booking flow asks 'what's your timeline?' before 'what's your budget?', and the form auto-disqualifies anything under the studio's minimum order — gently, with a referral to a curated marketplace for smaller commissions.

Creative is photo-led, shot in-studio with the actual artisans, and the headlines never use the word 'sale'. The campaign cadence is steady — no flash discounts, no urgency timers — because the customer we're trying to reach reads those as a category red flag.

Six months in, the campaign spends slightly less than it did before — but the average commission value is 3.4× higher, and the studio's calendar is booked four months out for custom work.

ROAS as a number is up modestly. ROAS as a meaningful proxy for studio health — number of high-value commissions per ad rupee — is up 4.1×.