Before we get into the details about marketing on Twitter and Instagram, let us learn quickly about some of the key features of both Twitter as well as Instagram.
Twitter was launched in 2006 whereas Instagram was founded in 2010. As of 2020, there are 1.3 billion twitter accounts out of which only 330 million are monthly active users globally whereas there are 1.2 billion Instagram accounts out of which 1 billion are monthly active users globally.

About 293 million Instagram users are aged between 15 and 24 and 338 million users are aged between 25 and 34. Talking about Twitter, 80% of its global population is below 50 years old. Twitter ranks slightly behind Instagram when it comes to users 60+ users.

When it comes to the worldwide gender split, about 51% of Instagram users are female and 49% are male and when we talk about Twitter 62% are male and 38% are female. 85% of India’s Twitter audience is male, ranking the country third highest for male-to-female ratio.

With the help of the above graphs, we come to know that Laos has highest female ratio when it comes to Instagram and for Twitter its Philippines with highest female ratio.

1. USER ENGAGEMENT REACH

One of the commonality between Instagram and Twitter is that maximum of their active users are aged between 18 and 29. And if a business is looking for a young audience, then surely it has to select both Instagram and Twitter.
From the above two graphs, it is quite evident that user traffic is much higher on Instagram than any other platform.
However, it is important to note that maximum Twitter users are inactive and Instagram users are mostly active with over 500 million people using Instagram daily whereas only 330 million Twitter users are active monthly. So if a new business wants to enter the market and wants easy and quick promotion, Instagram is a better option any day.

2. Sales

Instagram has separate business profiles specifically for collaborations and business deals. Email, contact number can be directly attached on profiles whereas same does not happen with Twitter.
Another important characteristic where Instagram leads over Twitter is its “Trackable” feature. Sales and Leads can be tracked through Instagram Advertisements and hence we can see clear Return on Investment.

According to Shopify, an e-commerce platform, average price tag for a sale referred from Instagram is $65 and it is $55 for Facebook and $46 for Twitter.
With Instagram settings, we can link our profile to other social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter but the same is not possible with Twitter and this can indirectly help in increasing sales.

Instagram being a more visual platform with variety of formats available is doing better than Twitter in driving sales.
In the graph below, it is found that traffic on Instagram is more than Twitter. So it is obvious, Instagram is ahead of Twitter when it comes to generating sales.

It is also important to note that Sales on social media platforms also depend on the country and the business field one is in.
After analysing the below three graphs, we will be able to understand that it is better to avoid using any of these applications for our business if our target audience is not into these fields and countries.

3) Return on Investment

Providing a link on our Instagram bio can fetch a lot of traffic and doing the same on our Tweets would also increase our traffic. Making good investment on Instagram sponsor advertisements and Twitter advertisement also increases our user traffic dramatically as Twitter shows our advertisements on “TRENDS” while Instagram shows our advertisements on stories.
Mostly, influencers prefer Instagram over any other platform since it is easy to handle and even users like Instagram posts as compared to other formats. And at the end all a business wants to do is to increase sales and earn profits. This is possible more on Instagram due to its unique yet diverse formats, high user engagement and efficient promotional techniques, so definitely ROI is bound to be more in Instagram than on Twitter.

Also, as mentioned before, Instagram Business profiles provide each and every detail about insights, engagements, and sales and as a result it gives better information regarding ROI in comparison to Twitter.
Two examples of Sales Tracking, User Enagagement and ROI information are given below.

Conclusion: Both Instagram and Twitter are doing well when it comes to marketing strategy and business. If we talk about situation half a decade ago, Twitter was leading but in 2020, Instagram is unbeatable winner.
Growth of the business also depends on the industry, for example fashion industry will do better on Instagram while News Industry will do better on Twitter.