Are Personas and Journeys Obsolete in Pharma Marketing? Has AI Replaced Them?

We spoke with 87 senior pharma leaders across customer excellence and commercial roles worldwide. The takeaway? AI isn't replacing personas and journeys—it’s enhancing them.

Here are three key ways AI and advanced analytics are transforming traditional marketing approaches in pharma:

1. Smarter Segmentation: AI enables precise customer micro-segmentation, helping teams creatively reuse content and incorporate a broader range of data sources.
2. Continuous Improvement: With AI, teams can systematically collect feedback from both reps and customers, analyze it, and refine campaigns in real time—often by the next sales cycle.
3. Enhanced Team Performance: By tracking journey performance and identifying effective rep behaviors, organizations can promote what's working and adjust what’s not.

We have compiled a detailed guide below, packed with best practices and examples from our research and the award-winning OctoPi platform, which supports commercial teams at some of the world's top pharma companies.

Smarter Segmentation with AI

Current Landscape and Hybrid Approach

Let’s look at the current landscape of persona and journey use in pharma.

Based on interviews with 87 industry leaders:

• 7% reported no customer segmentation
• 84% use traditional segmentation approaches
• 9% have adopted hybrid AI-enhanced segmentation
• 0% are running fully personalized, AI-driven marketing

What this means:
Most organizations are still using traditional persona-based strategies. However, a growing minority is pioneering a hybrid approach—creating 10–20 "micro-personas" and designing optimized journeys using both existing materials and AI insights.

These advanced teams combine internal and external data to understand what drives engagement and conversions. They then create data-backed personas and tailor journeys accordingly.

Creatively Reuse and Automate Marketing Content

Successful persona and journey deployment hinges on automation.

Top-performing pharma teams use Next Best Action (NBA) platforms to automate journey orchestration. In fact, 63% of the leaders we spoke to already use such tools—especially those with hybrid AI strategies.

Key success factors for NBA platforms include:

• Fast deployment and easy updates of complex journeys
• Clear visibility into journey steps for sales reps
• Integrated, customizable feedback collection
• Real-time tracking of journey progression and KPIs

(Needless to say, OctoPi does all of this out of the box.)

Use Data Creatively for Segmentation

One high-impact example of creative segmentation is content tagging.

Here is how it works:

1. Label all content (e.g., slides, RTEs) with relevant themes—such as efficacy, safety, urgency, quality of life, or administration
2. Tag external content (like HCP social posts) when available
3. Measure engagement for each label by customer
4. Use AI to identify preference patterns
5. Segment HCPs based on these preferences and tailor journeys accordingly

This data-driven method leads to more meaningful, personalized experiences.

Measure Impact and Iterate

Collect Feedback Consistently

The best pharma marketing teams gather continuous feedback, especially from field reps. The gold standard? Embedding simple, customizable feedback forms directly into your NBA platform.

Well-structured forms distinguish between:

• Content/journey ineffectiveness
• Access limitations (independent of content)
• Technical or other external issues

Analyze and Improve with AI

AI can turn raw feedback into actionable insights. Here are three principles for doing it right:

1. Measure impact: Correlate journey performance with sales and engagement metrics (e.g., clicks)
2. Spot what works: Identify top and bottom performers using objective KPIs
3. Understand why: Use AI to analyze feedback and uncover root causes