Course pages tend to answer this question with a list of topics. SEO, social media, email, analytics. The list is accurate and it tells you almost nothing, because two programmes with identical topic lists can teach completely different things depending on what they put first.
So this is the answer with the order left in, using our own curriculum as the worked example rather than a generic outline.
The question behind the question
People asking what a diploma covers are usually asking something more specific: will I be able to do the job at the end. That is a fair question and topic lists are bad at answering it, because knowing what a topic is called and being able to run it are separated by practice.
The useful test is whether the programme moves from decisions to execution or the other way round. Programmes that open with Ads Manager produce people who can build a campaign and cannot say who it is for. That is the most common failure in this field and it is a curriculum design problem, not a student problem.
Planning first, media buying last
Our diploma runs 21 modules and the first four are planning and positioning before any platform appears. The reason is unsentimental: buying media for an offer nobody wants is the most expensive mistake available in marketing, and it is a mistake made with the platform working perfectly.
Module one is how a plan is actually built, meaning objective, audience, channel, budget and the measurement decided before launch rather than argued about after. Modules two and three work a real brief end to end, including the part where the budget is smaller than the ambition and something has to be cut. Module four is the unique value proposition, which is where most campaigns fail long before targeting is involved.
What the modules actually cover
Grouped by what they are for, rather than listed as 21 separate items:
- Planning and positioning (modules 1 to 4). Building a plan, running it against a real brief, and defining why anyone should choose you over the cheaper option.
- Platform and content (5 to 10). How Facebook delivery and signals actually work, storytelling structure that survives the first second, producing content on a real schedule, choosing between strategies rather than doing all of them badly, personal branding and creator work, and tying a content plan to demand instead of to a posting calendar.
- Owned channels and search (11 to 13). The technical and structural work that decides whether traffic converts, search fundamentals, and email as the channel you own rather than rent.
- Production with AI (14 and 15). Practical image, design and video work, including where the tools still fail, which is the part usually left out.
- Media buying (16 to 21). A first real campaign built properly, reading the numbers in the first days, campaign types and the mismatches that quietly waste budget, custom audiences and Instagram specifics, then Google and search advertising, finishing with match types and ad headlines.
Notice that media buying is a third of the programme and it arrives last. That ratio is deliberate. The mechanics of buying are learnable in weeks; knowing what to buy for is what takes the rest of it.
The module people underestimate
Module four, the unique value proposition, is the one students most often expect to skim and most often come back to. It is not a branding exercise. It is the answer to a customer standing in front of a cheaper alternative, and if it is weak, every downstream decision inherits the weakness at a cost you pay per click.
The same logic applies to measurement. A funnel is a counting method rather than a picture of how customers think, which we set out with a worked example in the marketing funnel explained for beginners. Knowing which step is losing people is what turns a report into a decision.
Why any curriculum goes stale, and how fast
This is the honest limit of every course page including ours. Platforms change and a curriculum written three years ago teaches things that are no longer true.
A live example worth knowing about if you are studying measurement right now: Google Ads has cut its attribution models down to two. Its own documentation states that the first click, linear, time decay and position-based attribution models are no longer supported, leaving last click and data-driven, with data-driven the default for most conversion actions. Anyone taught six models as current is being taught a version of the platform that has been retired.
The practical defence is to ask when the material was last rebuilt rather than when the course was last run. Ours is recorded with access until January 2027 specifically so a module can be revisited when you finally need it, which only helps if the module is current.
The market it is being taught for
Curriculum choices should follow the market they are aimed at, and Egypt's is specific. DataReportal puts the country at 119 million people with 98.2 million using the internet at the end of 2025, an online penetration rate of 82.7 percent, alongside 51.6 million social media user identities as of October 2025.
The gap between those two numbers is the part worth teaching. Social platforms reach roughly half the population while the internet reaches over four fifths, which is why search, email and website conversion sit in the curriculum rather than being treated as afterthoughts behind social. A programme that is entirely social media is teaching one channel for a market that is not only on it.
What a diploma cannot do for you
It cannot give you a portfolio by itself. Employers in this field look at work before they look at certificates, which is why the programme is built so you finish with projects you can show, and why we say plainly on the diploma page that two real projects carry more weight than any certificate.
It also cannot replace the self-directed path if that is genuinely what suits you. Khaled Badr's series on getting started makes the case for building foundations without paying anyone, particularly the second part on building your foundation, and it is a fair alternative to consider before spending money. The difference a structured programme buys is sequence and feedback, not access to information.
How to judge any curriculum before you pay
Four questions, and they work on us as well as on anyone else:
- What comes first, planning or the ad platform? The answer tells you what the programme thinks marketing is.
- When was the material last rebuilt, not last delivered?
- What will I have made by the end that I could show someone?
- Can I see a portion before deciding? If not, ask why not.
If you want the media buying half specifically rather than the full programme, we have written separately about what a media buying course in Cairo should actually teach. And if you are working out where a diploma sits against the rest of what is available, the course list is the shorter route to that answer than any brochure.