I help marketing teams stay findable while AI rewrites what findable means
I am Viken Patel. I spend my time on one problem: marketing teams are losing visibility to AI search without knowing it, and most of the advice out there is either hype or guesswork. I bring 17+ years of operating marketing systems, not just studying AI, to figuring out what is actually happening and what to do about it.
The arc
I did not start in AI. I started designing websites.
I began as a web designer. It did not take long to learn that a beautiful website does not grow a business. Marketing does, systems do, data does. That took me into SEO, paid advertising, conversion optimisation, and CRM automation, working with SaaS companies and service businesses on real growth, not vanity metrics.
Eventually I became Head of Marketing for a global SaaS hospitality company, running multi-country campaigns and owning the number, not just the strategy deck. Then I founded theCSS Agency, building websites, CRMs, and marketing systems for businesses worldwide.
Then AI arrived. I did not treat it as a new toolkit to add to the pile. I treated it as the biggest shift to how marketing systems work since the internet arrived, and I have spent the years since figuring out, in practice, what that actually means for a marketing team’s traffic, pipeline, and revenue.
Today
What I actually do
I help marketing leaders answer two questions: where are we actually losing visibility as AI reshapes search, and what does our marketing system need to look like so AI output becomes pipeline instead of just volume.
In practice that is audits, strategy engagements, system redesigns, and workshops with founders and marketing leaders, described in full on the consulting page.
Principles
What I believe
- AI is not a chatbot. It is a specialist with a defined role.
- Treat every model as an employee with responsibilities, not a magic box you type into.
- Systems over prompts.
- A good prompt used once is a trick. A workflow that produces consistent results every time is an asset.
- Business outcomes over tool demos.
- If it does not move traffic, pipeline, or revenue, it is not a result. It is a screenshot.
- Measure honestly, publish either way.
- I pre-register what success looks like before I run an experiment, and I publish the result even when it is not the one I hoped for.
- Depth beats hype.
- Seventeen years of shipping the systems AI now has to plug into is worth more than a year of AI opinions.
Background
Where this comes from
- 17+ years in digital marketing, SEO, and web development
- Founder, theCSS Agency
- Webflow Premium Partner
- 10+ years of SEO experience, now focused on AI search (AEO and GEO)
- Former Head of Marketing, global SaaS hospitality company
- Managed multi-country Google Ads campaigns
- HubSpot implementation and automation consultant
Platforms
- Webflow
- HubSpot
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- GA4
- SEO
- CRO
- Automation
- AI workflows
The other company
My relationship with theCSS Agency
theCSS Agency is the implementation company I founded: Webflow builds, technical SEO, paid media, and website work. This site is where I do the thinking: strategy, diagnosis, and advisory. When an engagement needs hands-on implementation, I will say so directly and point you to theCSS Agency. The two stay separate on purpose, so you should always know which hat I am wearing.
If you want a second opinion on where you stand
The fastest way to find out is the AI Search Visibility Audit, a fixed-fee diagnostic, not a sales call.