Advanced Certificate of Marketing Communication and Psychology

Unit 1: Foundations of Marketing Communication

• What is marketing communication?
• The communication process and marketing mix
• The Australian marketing context
• Brands and messaging fundamentals
• Communication objectives

Unit 2: Understanding Audiences and Consumer Behaviour 

• Models of consumer decision making
• The aida model (attention–interest–desire–action)
• The consumer decision journey
• The customer journey
• Emotional and behavioural influences
• Cultural, social, and lifestyle influences
• Target market analysis
• The role of personas in audience understanding
• Research tools: surveys, focus groups, and data analytics
• Translating insights into effective communication

Unit 3: Brand Communication and Storytelling 

• The role of storytelling in branding
• Creating brand voice and personality
• Emotional and visual branding
• Maintaining brand integrity across platforms

Unit 4: Integrated Marketing Communication Strategy             

• Integrated marketing communication (IMC)
• Aligning objectives, audience, and channels
• Media planning and message consistency
• Cross platform coordination (tv, print, social, digital)
• Measuring IMC effectiveness

Unit 5: Digital and Social Media Marketing          

• Social media strategy and content creation
• Influencer marketing and community engagement
• Search and display advertising basics
• Introduction to content marketing and SEO
• Techniques for optimising content for SEO
• Benefits of a strong content marketing strategy
• Types of content for each stage
• Awareness stage
• Consideration stage
• Decision stage
• Choosing the right content formats
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Engagement
• Awareness metrics
• Return on investment (ROI) metrics
• Conversion
• Third-party analytics tools
• Creating reports

Unit 6: Campaign Development and Ethical Practice  

• Campaign planning and project management
• Budgeting, scheduling, and resource allocation
• Writing persuasive proposals and creative briefs
• Ethics, regulation, and social responsibility
• Presenting and evaluating campaign outcomes

Unit 1: Introduction to Psychology

• What is Psychology
• The goals of psychology
• A brief history of psychology
• Biological perspective
• Behavioural perspective
• Cognitive perspective
• Humanistic perspective
• Psychodynamic perspective
• Socio-cultural perspective
• Psychology as a profession
• Psychology for everyday professionals

Unit 2: Research Methods in Psychology

• Psychology as a science
• Quantitative vs qualitative methods
• Common research designs
• Experiments
• Case studies
• Surveys
• Observations
• Ethics in psychology research
• APS code of ethics
• Interpreting psychology research in the media

Unit 3: Biological Bases of Behaviour

• Brain structure and function
• The nervous system
• Hormones: chemical messengers
• The endocrine system
• Genetics: the blueprint of behaviour
• Evolutionary psychology
• Biology and behaviour
• Sleep, stress, and mental health

Unit 4: Cognitive Psychology

• Sensation and perception
• Memory systems: short-term, working, and long-term memory
• Classical conditioning
• Operant conditioning
• Observational learning
• Problem-solving, decision-making, and critical thinking
• Cognitive psychology applications

Unit 5: Developmental Psychology

• Lifespan development
• Infancy (birth-2 years)
• Childhood (2-12 years)
• Adolescence (12-18 years)
• Adulthood (18-65)
• Ageing (65+)
• Piaget’s cognitive development theory
• Erikson’s psychosocial development theory
• Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory
• Attachment and bonding
• Identity formation
• Cultural perspectives on development

Unit 6: Personality and Individual Differences

• What is personality?
• Trait and type theories
• Freud’s psychodynamic theory
• Humanistic approaches
• The Big Five personality model
• Intelligence, creativity, and emotional intelligence
• Personality assessments and ethical considerations

Unit 7: Social Psychology

• How social context influences behaviour
• Components of attitudes (ABC Model)
• Persuasion
• Prejudice
• Group dynamics
• Conformity
• Obedience
• Leadership
• Cross-cultural social psychology
• Social psychology and marketing
• Social psychology and teamwork
• Social psychology and education

Unit 8: Applied Psychology and Mental Health

• Psychological disorders
• Anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia
• Approaches to treatment
• Positive psychology and resilience
• Psychology Iin applied settings
• Health psychology
• Educational psychology
• Business and organisational psychology
• Sports psychology
• Forensic psychology